Black and White Portrait – Lauren
Well, it’s ages since I last did a portrait session but since a few photographer friends were getting together for a barbie, show and tell and model shoot, I went along with it.
Edited in GIMP, Lauren, photographed in the garden outside the home studio.
After photographing in the studio for a while, we went outside where it was rather overcast, most of the time, cold and windy.
A gold reflector helped the colour images along.
The model did really well in the not so pleasant conditions.
I’ve given the above digital image a pretty good work over in GIMP.
Back in my old darkroom days, I’d make gum bichromate prints. The gum bichromate process goes back to the earliest days of photography when the photographer would produce a large format negative and contact print in the sun.
A pseudo gum bichromate print, produced in the computer using GIMP.
Gum bichromate emulsion consists of three substances:
* Pigment. The old timers used crushed charcoal but I used Winsor and Newton watercolour pigment.
* Adhesive. In the old days, egg white, properly called albumen, was used. I used gum arabic also known as gum acacia.
* Light sensitive agent. Potassium bichromate, sensitive to UV light.
Playing around with this medium, I learned to print on various materials including fabric, watercolour paper and timber. Often I’d use callico. My first fabric print was on part of an old, blue denim skirt.
This manipulated image reminded me of those creative times so I gave it a a bit of colour and a fabric texture in GIMP.
A monochrome (B&W) portrait converted from the original colour digital image using UFRaw, followed by minor manipulation in GIMP.
