Thursday, January 12, 2012

More Mixed Media Beginnings

Experimenting with photography in the darkroom is where my interest in mixed media began.  I was very interested in altering photographs and especially giving them a dream-like quality.  The images below were again shot with film and done by hand in the darkroom, no Photoshop or digital alterations.  A custom negative holder was created to give the photos very soft and 'torn' edges.  The negatives were exposed through a sheet of tissue paper, which gives them a very soft and distorted quality. 

It has been quite some time since I've shot & experimented with film, maybe its time to get out the old Pentax or Holga.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Mixed Media Beginnings

I have always loved experimenting with photography and my first experiments took place in the darkroom.  Garden Dream Series was a project that involved several unique aspects, all done strictly in the darkroom, no Photoshop!  The objective of the project was to create dreamlike images that depicted a walk through a garden.

The first step was to photograph two different subjects individually - nature scenes and self portraits.  I then constructed a special negative holder that would sandwich two negatives at the same time.  These were then exposed simultaneously through a sheet of glass that had Vaseline smeared along the edges.  The overlapping of images, and the distorted edges that the Vaseline provided gave the images a dream like quality.

The first image, Garden Dream 1, was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Plano Art Associations National Juried Show.

Garden Dream 1

Garden Dream 2

Monday, January 2, 2012

Purple Flowers

Several months ago when my sister moved into a new building for work she requested some flower photographs for the walls of her new office.  Since Christmas was approaching I thought it would be a great gift idea.  Her favorite color is purple and we just happen to have an abundance of purple flowers in our garden.  I decided to frame 4 photographs in such a way that when positioned on the wall it would seem like she was looking out of a window onto a garden of purple flowers.