duana_r__ Posted September 19, 2001 Share Posted September 19, 2001 hi <p> i am in 3rd yr photo and am doing an independant study on distressingprints and negatives to get an antiqued, aged, scratchy, roughed-upeffect, simular to Joel-Peter Witkin's work and several others. <p> so far i have tried reticulation, scratching with pins/sandpaper,painting ink on the neg, as well as printing through dirty glass,contact printing double exposures, scratching prints, and liquidemulsion on paper. <p> these experiements have taught me alot, but i still haven't aquiredthe "look" i want as mentioned above. any ideas for me to try?i am working with black & white in 35mm & medium format. <p> thanks,duana Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed b. Posted September 20, 2001 Share Posted September 20, 2001 You might want to start collecting bottles to shoot through with your 35mm camera. It is hard to find ones that give just the right amount of distortion, but the results are sometimes interesting. There is a Russian fellow who does this all the time with vodka bottles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jorge_gasteazoro Posted September 20, 2001 Share Posted September 20, 2001 Ed, are bottles full or empty....?? I guess if they are full the end up empty after the photo shoot..:-)) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed b. Posted September 21, 2001 Share Posted September 21, 2001 Jorge: Since it is difficult to shoot through a whiskey filter (and even more difficult to determine the filter factor), I was forced to drink the scotch first. We all have to make sacrifices for art... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_willison Posted November 1, 2001 Share Posted November 1, 2001 Duana: <p> This is often easy to do but difficult to do well. You might try looking more closely at the work of 19th and early 20th century photographers to determine what factors give the photo its characteristic look. Sometimes its a function of the older photographic emulsions and their differing light sensitivities. The slow character of 19th century plates forced photographers to use longer exposures and often this shows in their work. Older emulsions were also orthochromatic which resulted in lighter than normal sky areas in landscapes. In addition, these photographers used large negatives in combination with very basic lenses of a simple design. The large negatives provided a level of detail not seen in modern, small-format cameras. The lenses, however, were not coated and were prone to flare which lowered the contrast of the final print. It is also worthwhile to note that many older lenses were not corrected for certain optical distortions and these distortions were evident at the edges of a typical print. Also, many older lenses did not cover the film format and this resulted in vignetting (light fall-off) and softness in the corners of the negative. The character of older photographs is also associated with the type of paper and the process used. Fiber-based paper is an obvious choice as is the use of older processes like platinum and POP with gold toner. If you are really looking for a challenge, you mught even think about photogravure. <p> If you are looking for some simple solutions, try sepia toner in conjunction with vignetting and a soft-focus filter. You can also use bleach without toner (part 1 of the 2 part sepia toner) to produce the blown-out look of an older photograph. <p> I hope this helps. <p> .............. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jflowers Posted April 11, 2002 Share Posted April 11, 2002 I was reading this and had an idea. Find some old ruined glass plate negs that are useless for printing and try double exposing your paper using your neg and one of these. Many of them are so faded and grungy that they might prove interesting. Depending on your enlarger you might have to make a carrier for the glass plates, but that's pretty easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vergil_kanne Posted June 14, 2002 Share Posted June 14, 2002 Hi there, <br><br> It might be interesting to also try experimenting with sandwiching negs or exposing paper with multiple negs. Taking a piece of completely exposed lead, scratching it up and overprinting could make for some nice darker scratches. Or you could actually photograph some that was marked up and use that for sandwiching (an old baking pan often has very interesting patterns and scratches). You could play with litho sheets to dodge areas where you didn't want as many scratches. The good thing about the above techniques is that they leave your original neg intact. <br><br> If you're not worried about destroying your neg you could try boiling it first. Just touching the emulsion with a pin after it's soft will rip and crumple it exposing areas of complete black. Freezing the neg after boiling also yields some interesting results. <br><br> Lately I've been relying more on digital techniques to get the types of wear and weather effects I was looking for. If you don't want to go all the way digital, you could consider using digital images just to make scratch and texture negs and still print everything in a wet darkroom. For some images I've used an old CD case scanned with a black background to get a really scratched surface to use as a channel. <br><br> I've included a photograph that I added some weather to. <br><br> Be sure to let us all know what techniques end up working best for you. <br><br> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quinn Posted November 10, 2003 Share Posted November 10, 2003 (I know this is an old post but I have to contribute.) Duana, You should study the wet-plate collodion process. It is what you are looking for. I am a wet-plate photograher and was lured in by the distressed aethestic of collodion (that and many other reasons). I was trained by the Ostermans in Rochester, NY. They are the leading experts in 19th century wet-plate photography. Take a look at <a href="http://www.collodion.com">collodion.com</a> Regards, Quinn Jacobson Collodion Artist/Photographer<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pierresplace Posted February 12, 2007 Share Posted February 12, 2007 I've been restoring old photos for some time now which have generally been vintage or very old. To create many of the looks of vintage is basically an artistic or creative effort. I'd say that they are more drawn or painted for lack of a better term. There are some filters that can work too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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