Re: Re: gum printing problems!
Walking on Gloy at 17 degrees Baume.
Judy
The day was 10 00 to 1730.
The transparency film was Ektachrome developed at a commercial processing house
across the road, ( on the opposite corner to Falkiners ) in Southampton Row.
You have seen the picture, the traffic cone and yellow gas pipe against a Tudor
wall in Lincolns Inn Fields. Somebody two years later, on seeing the picture,
told me where it had been taken. He said the he had seen the cone and the gas
pipe and thought that it would make a good picture too !
The paper with its yellow first coat had already been prepared.
The separations were made onto FP 4 which gave us the necessary contrast
controls and it is, of course, panchromatic.
We got the yellow coat exposed and developed and recoated for magenta before
lunch.
This gave us plenty of time to finish off the four before five.
There were advantages that helped us with the illusion of walking on water:
1. It was a summer workshop of bright and capable photographers from around the
world who worked together as a team,
(one, did not wish to admit that she came from Baton Rouge).
2. I, and Peter Marshall, on an earlier workshop, had worked out the
combinations of exposure and development times for FP 4 and developer for each
of the separations e g contrast through blue filters is lower.
3. Nothing went wrong ! !
I did not say that everybody did it. What I wanted to ensure that eveybody got
the most out of a five day course. While all this was happening everybody was
getting on with their own multicolour gum prints.
As you see there was not anything particularly clever about it.
Unfortunately Central/ St Martins decided to limit their summer workshops to
basic photography subsequently.
People seem to get quite incredibly wedded to over-complication . i think my
earlier comment about having to wear robes and mutter incantations when
prepapring gum prints was justified. If that is the way people wish to live
their lives who am I to object. It is just that the simple and elegant solution
is the one that gives the best results and involves the least labour. And that
is what I try to pass on to students.
But over-complication of already complicated procedures leads to frustration and
disaster.
Terry