(BPP) Creating a Contact Print Lesson

Photography_LessonTopBanner.png Creating a Contact Print

We Have Contact!

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In this lesson, you will simulate the look and feel of a pinhole camera to take a photograph and make a contact print.

  • Lesson: Methods to Create a Pinhole Photograph – Explore 3 methods to create a digital pinhole photograph
  • Challenge: Create a Digital Negative – Challenge yourself and your photography skills! Convert your digital pinhole into a digital negative for printing.
  • Application: Create a Contact Print – Use your digital negative to create a physical cyanotype contact print

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So How Do We Make One?

There are several ways you could create a pinhole-style image.

  1. App: There are apps available for cell phones that simulate the look and feel of a pinhole photograph.
  2. Camera Obscura: You could use your camera obscura to frame and image and capture the projection digitally like you did in the last module.
  3. Digital Pinhole: Or, you could create an actual pinhole and place it on top of your lens. This can be done with a cell phone camera or a digital slr, though the latter is more complicated.

Let's explore what is required to create a pinhole for your cell phone camera:

Creating a Pinhole for your cell phone camera video:

Video Information:

To create a pinhole for your cell phone camera you will need the following supplies: Empty aluminum can or cardboard, scissors, a pin, tape, and sandpaper. To create the metal pinhole you will follow these steps: (1) Pierce the side of the can with scissors (2) Cut off the top (3) Cut down the side (4) Cut off the bottom (5) Cut a small, clean rectangle out of the metal sheet (6) Place the metal on top of scrap cardboard (7) Pierce with pin (8) Use sandpaper to remove bur. To create a cardboard pinhole follow these steps: (1) Cut a small square of cardboard with scissors (2) Place on top of scrap cardboard (3) Pierce with pin (4) Use a writing pen to enlarge the hole on both sides. Now using either your metal or cardboard pinhole, tape to a cell phone over the lens.

Now What?

PHOTO_BW_DarkRoom.jpg When using a pinhole camera to create a photograph, the resulting image is typically a negative. This is because black & white silver gelatin paper is often used as the photographic material. The silver gelatin in this paper reacts to light - areas that are exposed turn black to grey depending on how much light reaches the area. Parts of the paper that are not exposed to light remain white. This paper must be loaded into the camera in a dark, light-tight space - typically a darkroom or changing bag.

You may have noticed in the module overview video that the light in the darkroom was red. This is called a safelight. Darkroom safelights can range from shades of red to yellow. And they are called safelights because it is safe to use silver gelatin paper under them - safelights do not expose the paper so you can see while you are in the darkroom. This is not the case for all photographic media. For instance, the black and white film must be loaded and processed in complete darkness - no safelights for this process! Once the paper is loaded into the camera it can then be exposed by opening the pinhole shutter for the correct amount of time depending on lighting conditions. After the paper is exposed, it is then processed in a series of chemicals that make the latent image appear, stop the developing process, remove any unexposed silver and harden the exposed silver, and then rinses the chemicals off.

Here's an example of a correctly exposed and processed silver-gelatin pinhole negative:
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While beautiful in its own right, it's even more gratifying as a photographer to see the image as a positive. To achieve this, the paper negative is "contact printed". This is exactly what it sounds like - the negative makes direct contact with the material that will be the positive image. This is different than making a print with roll film from a 35mm camera. Roll film can be contact printed, but the resulting image would be tiny! Instead, we place this film inside a machine called an enlarger that projects the image onto the positive material. This allows us to choose the size of the resulting image, focus, contrast, and many other details. But with paper negatives from pinhole cameras, contact printing is the way to go.

Making the Contact Print                                                               

Let's Print It!

To create a contact print, the negative is place face down on top of an unexposed piece of silver gelatin paper in the darkroom. It is then sandwiched with glass or plexiglass (to ensure uniform contact) and flashed with light. The positive is then processed just as the negative was and the contact print is complete!

Here's an example of a pair of correctly processed negatives and positives from a pinhole camera:

POSITIVE

NEGATIVE
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Since we don't have access to a dark room, we're going to approach creating our contact print from an alternative perspective. We will create a pinhole-style image using either our camera obscura, a pinhole app for cell phone cameras, or by placing an actual pinhole on a functional digital camera. Then you'll print a black and white negative transparency of your successful image, and then contact print the transparency on your cyanotype paper. Voila! You have created a contact print!

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Since we don't have a darkroom and can't use silver gelatin paper, we're going to use our cyanotype paper to make a contact print of your pinhole-style image. To do that, we have to create a digital negative of your pinhole-style image. Select one of the images you created while exploring the 3 methods to create a pinhole style image and practice creating a digital negative following the steps below.

Video Information:

Select your editing software, select an image and open in your chosen software. Convert to grayscale. Manipulate the photo, adjust the curves, invert to create a negative, and save your image. Print your image on transparency with an ink jet printer.

PHOTO_THEAPPLICATION.pngNow it's time to apply all that you've learned and complete your major project. We're going to continue exploring the concept of a sense of place. Using one of the 3 methods in the module, create a pinhole-style image that conveys a strong sense of place. Remember to consider the elements of art and to utilize one principle to organize those elements into a strong composition. Follow the steps in The Challenge and turn your pinhole-style image into a digital negative. Print the digital negative on the transparency included in your kit. Then use your digital negative to create a positive cyanotype print of your digital pinhole photograph!

And here's what the final project will look like:

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