Thames project – stage ten
31st May 2021
This is the final stage in this section of this project – I plan to continue this project to become a much bigger body of work. I decided I wanted to present this final set of images as book, it was important to me that the viewer could hold the book in their hands and experience the tactility of it. I used some of the seabeet that I’d collected from the site to create a dye which I then used to dye fabric to create backcloths for the covers. The book itself is a concertina which begins with text detailing the date, time and tidal conditions which the photos were taken and also the materials used to develop and fix the film. This is followed by the images, which I rephotographed digitally to best show both the image itself and the matter on the surface, presented in the order that I took them as I walked along the Thames path. The viewer therefore experiences the stretch of river in the same order which I did. Although the images themselves have been reproduced digitally it was important to me that matter from the location is still present in the book which I why used seabeet to dye the backcloths. I didn’t rinse these so that the maximum amount of matter would remain and the dye would leave its own tide marks on the covers. This handmade artist’s book has been made in an edition of three and I’ll be entering one of the editions into exhibitions.
Thames project – stage nine
30th May 2021
Some of the images from the final set I created for this section of my project, taken on 21st April at low tide around 2.30pm, developed on 22nd April using seabeet and Thames river water collected from the site, unrinsed so that the matter from the site would remain on the surface of the film. The salt crystals can be clearly seen on the surface of these negatives and have created their own tide marks as they’ve dried.
Camera: Rolleiflex
Film: Fomapan 120 black and white 100 iso
Developer: Seabeet
130g frozen seabeet thawed and then stewed in 550ml boiled tap water overnight
Added 12g vitamin C powder and 44g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 40 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Fix: Salt
152g sea salt dissolved in 400ml river Thames water + 150ml hot tap water unfiltered
Fixed for 12 hours
Thames project – stage eight
29th May 2021
I developed this film at the same time as the one I posted yesterday, using the same process and amount of materials, again I didn’t rinse this after developing and fixing and so the plant matter, river sediment and salt have remained on the surface.
Camera: Rolleiflex
Film: Ilford 120 FP4 black and white 125 iso
Developer: Seabeet
130g frozen seabeet thawed and then stewed in 500ml boiled tap water overnight
Added 12g vitamin C powder and 44g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 30 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Fix: Salt
166g sea salt dissolved in 500ml river Thames water left overnight and unfiltered
Fixed for 12 hours
Thames project – stage seven
28th May 2021
I was getting towards the end of the research stage of my project and after testing lots of film types I decided that medium format black & white negative film was working the best. The seabeet developer recipe I’d developed was working but I wanted to make changes to the fix I was using and to try and make fix using water collected from the Thames. I made some fix using river water and sea salt and left it unfiltered so the salt crystals and sediment particles would remain.
I also wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t rinse the film between stages so that traces of the material from the location I was using would be left on the surface of the film.
Camera: Rolleiflex
Film: Lomography 120 Earl Grey black and white 100 iso
Developer: Seabeet
130g frozen seabeet thawed and then stewed in 500ml boiled tap water overnight
Added 12g vitamin C powder and 44g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 30 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Fix: Salt
166g sea salt dissolved in 500ml river Thames water left overnight and unfiltered
Fixed for 12 hours
Left: making seabed ‘tea’ by stewing seabed leaves in hotter overnight, right: making river water fix by adding seasalt to water collected from the river Thames and after shaking leaving to dissolve overnight
Thames project – stage six
27th May 2021
I wanted to try another black & white reversal (slide) film to see if I could get the images to turn out positive by bleaching them for longer.
I cut the film in half and tried bleaching one section for 30 minutes and the other for an hour again using citric acid.
Although this didn’t work and they still turned out as negative images I was really pleased with the clarity and contrast on them.
Camera: Olympus OM1
Film: Adox Scala 35mm B&W 50 iso
Developer: Seabeet
136g frozen seabeet thawed and then stewed in 600ml boiled tap water overnight
Added 14g vitamin C powder and 52g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 30 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Bleach: 2g citric acid dissolved in 290ml tap water, bleached for 30 minutes
Blix: 2g citric acid dissolved in 290ml salt fix, blixed for 1 hour
Fix: Salt
166g table salt dissolved in 600ml warm water then filtered
Fixed for 12 hours
Thames project – stage five
26th May 2021
At this stage I wanted to try creating some images on 120 slide film and also to see what happened if I created images in colour rather than black & white.
So I tried a roll of Kodak 120 colour reversal (slide) film. I had purposefully chosen this type of film as I wanted to achieve bright, saturated colours but the day I took the photos the weather was overcast and drizzly and so the images have a more ghostly, ethereal quality to them. I had them developed by Traia Photolab who are a local lab, they offer a really good service but it was also important to the integrity of my project that I used a local company.
Camera: Rolleiflex
Film: Kodak 120 Ektachrome E100 reversal (slide) film 100 iso from Analogue Wonderland
Developed by Traia Photolab
Left: High tide on 17th March, right: Low tide on 17th March to show the difference the weather conditions make to the view. Both images were taken on the same day as the film photos at the top of this post although on my iPhone.
Thames project – stage four
25th May 2021
Next I tried the same process with some black & white reversal film as I had with the colour (I used 35mm film for both of these as medium format reversal film is expensive) but this time I made some changes to measurements and timings.
I made a stronger ‘tea’ of seabeet by using a larger quantity of leaves. I also used leaves that I had frozen so when they were thawed they had already started to break down.
I also tried leaving the bleach stage for twice as long – 30 minutes rather than 15.
Again I had tried overexposing each image so taking three versions of the same image one correctly exposed, one overexposed by one stop and one overexposed by two stops.
The images on the black & white reversal film came out much clearer and with higher contrast than the colour reversal film. However, the film itself is still very opaque so not suitable for projecting.
All the technical details are below:
Camera: Olympus OM1
Film: FomaPan R 100 35mm black & white 100 iso
Developer: Seabeet
500g frozen seabeet thawed and then stewed in 1000ml boiled tap water overnight
Added 27g vitamin C powder and 90g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 30 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Bleach: 2g citric acid dissolved in 290ml tap water, bleached for 30 minutes
Blix: 2g citric acid dissolved in 290ml salt fix, blixed for 30 minutes
Fix: Salt
333g table and sea salt dissolved in 1200ml warm water then filtered
Fixed for 12 hours
Thames project – stage three
24th May 2021
I had initially thought about making prints from my negatives but realised that they would be another step removed from the location so I wanted to continue experimenting with film for the time being. For my next film I tried developing a reversal (slide) film so that I would hopefully get positive images.
I found out that reversal film can be developed with caffenol (coffee based developer) so thought another plant based developer would probably work. But developing reversal film involves a bleaching stage. Someone on a forum had mentioned adding citric acid to fix and using it as a bleach so I tried this next.
I only had 35mm colour reversal film available in my stash so while I ordered some black and white film and waited for it to arrive I tried out a colour film.
I had read that overexposing the film will help with the results so each image was taken three times at correct exposure, overexposed by 1 stop, overexposed by 2 stops.
I cut the film into 3 lengths after exposing it and tried developing length 1 with just developer and fix, length 2 with developer, bleach and fix and length 3 with developer, blix (bleach and fix mixed) and fix.
The images did come out but the film is very opaque so they’re quite difficult to see and the bleaching didn’t make them into positive images. I found that the third strip of film which was blixed worked the best.
All the technical details are below:
Camera: Olympus OM1
Film: Fujichrome 35mm Sensia Colour 400 iso
Developer: Seabeet
240g seabeet stewed in 1000ml hot tap water overnight
Added 24g vitamin C powder and 90g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 30 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Bleach: 2.1g citric acid dissolved in 290ml tap water, bleached for 15 minutes
Blix: 1.9g citric acid dissolved in 250ml salt fix, blixed for 30 minutes
Fix: Salt
333g table salt dissolved in 1200ml warm water then filtered
Fixed for 12 hours
Thames project – stage two
23rd May 2021
I started taking photos of the river on my Rolleiflex camera. I wanted to work with medium format as I felt it was a better format for documenting the landscape due to its size.
I was aware that seaweed could be used to make photography developer and had wanted try this for a while. I was hoping to collect some seaweed from the foreshore but there’s not much available. I had noticed a plant growing next to the Thames path that was abundant and I thought might be seabeet. With some help from my Dad to identify it I found out that it was so I had a go at making seabeet developer and it worked!
The recipe and timings I used are based on lots of different things I read on the internet and combined based on what I hoped would work. All the technical details are below:
Camera: Rolleiflex TLR
Film: Lomography 120 Earl Grey black and white 100 iso
Developer: Seabeet
120g seabeet stewed in 550ml hot tap water overnight
Added 12g vitamin C powder and 45g soda crystals the next day when cool
Stand develop for 30 minutes at room temperature
Stop: Tap water
Fix: Salt
150g table salt dissolved in 550ml warm tap water then filtered
Fixed for 12 hours
Thames project – starting point
22nd May 2021
Over the last six months I’ve been working on a project exploring a mile of the river Thames near where I live and working with sustainable photography processes.
I’ve been doing this research as my dissertation project for my MA in Artist Teacher Practice – although I’ve realised that it’s going to become a much bigger body of work and will continue after I’ve finished my MA.
I learnt how to use the processes I’ve been investigating by watching YouTube videos and reading blog entries so I wanted to share what I’ve learnt too. I’ll be doing that here on my website and also on Instagram everyday for the next week or so. At the start of this project I spent a couple of weeks taking regular walks along the stretch of the Thames that I wanted to explore, observing what was happening and taking photos and videos on my phone. This pair of photos was taken last December of the same view about a week apart but in different weather conditions. They were stored next to each other on my phone and showed how dramatically the light affected the landscape. This made me realise that I wanted to use photography to explore the location and create my work. But I found that working digitally wasn’t allowing enough of a connection to the site for me. I needed to be working with something physical and tangible, something that I could hold and wasn’t stored on a cloud system on the internet somewhere…
Sally Gunnett 