{"id":4960,"date":"2011-10-17T20:52:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T12:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/?p=4960"},"modified":"2011-10-27T21:38:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T13:38:03","slug":"unmasking-negativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/?p=4960","title":{"rendered":"Unmasking Negativity : How?"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Unmasking Negativity : The Truth Beneath’ <\/strong>is part of the ‘Impossible Lessons’ exhibition where a handful of people get to showcase and share special ‘tricks’ and experiments done using the Impossible Project films and Spectra cameras.<\/p>\n

I was pretty lost in the beginning … not knowing what to do and neither had I any experiment in mind. Doing stuffs like double exposures seemed a little too common … so I decided to take a risk (and waste lots of film) and try something different.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps it was just luck that after seeing some tips on obtaining the negative back from the Impossible Project films … I was tried it out … and in a corner in the toilet was a bottle of bleach. Yeah … the smelly and strong liquid! Something told me it might be cool to ‘bathe’ the negative in the bleach and I took a capful of the bleach and bathed the negative back with it … and … miracle happened!<\/p>\n

I remember going ‘Whoooa!!! Whoaaa!! Oh my!!!’ when I saw the brown substance on the negative back turning blue and then after running it through water and rubbing it gently … the negative turned out really cool with some lighter shade, more contrasty and … ermm … way cool!<\/p>\n

I wanted to do a video on how it is done and since I was just taking (big) risks during the initial experiments … I had to shoot a new photo and then redo the entire process again … this time … with the video camera on.<\/p>\n

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This one (above) is a result of accidentally spilling a capful of bleach on the negative. I was a little slow in retrieving it and rub off the blue substance under a running tap … so it looks like some weird … ermm …. whatever. I like it though. \ud83d\ude1b<\/em><\/p>\n

It ain’t easy shooting video and doing the stuffs at the same time (a tripod doesn’t help much) but I think … ermm … it should be okay. If you have played with emulsion transfer before, you might realize that there is a small part of the process missing in the video. Hahaha! Yeah … the part where you wash off the powdery\/sticky\/whatever thing off the top of the negative backing. I forgot to switch the video recording on! Anyway … it makes not much difference since you have to rinse it off in the end anyway.<\/p>\n

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This one above is my favorite. At least this is one shot that I did put some planning into … knowing a white background will turn dark and the black tires will be white (or light in color) on the negative.<\/em><\/p>\n

Disclaimer : I do not know what actually happens to the brownish substance on the negative when it comes in contact with bleach. Please do not ask me if you will turn into a Smurf when your hands get in contact with the blue substance or if you end up dissolving your hands in the process. I foolishly took a risk doing these without a pair of gloves but I think putting on a pair of them will be a safer bet. \ud83d\ude00<\/em><\/p>\n

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Let’s get to the video …<\/p>\n

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Yup! The secret to it … bleach! I have not tried any other bleach apart from this one (shown in video) but I guess they should all work the same. No … you don’t have to choose a pink floral scent one. I was just vain when I went to the supermarket to pick up a new bottle just now. I finished the last few drops we had last weekend during the initial experiment. \ud83d\ude1b I actually ended up wasting two (!!!) bottles of bleach in the whole process (of course including those many screwed up ones).<\/p>\n

Here are some additional tips should you wanna try bleaching your negatives :<\/p>\n

1. I realize that it is best to bleach them about an hour or two after taking the photos. Some photos that were few days old seemed a little harder to bleach and I had to repeat the bleaching process a couple of times before it looks better. <\/em><\/p>\n

2. When repeating the bleaching process (if the first bleaching doesn’t give you satisfactory result) … make very sure not to overdo it. You might just wipe out EVERYTHING on the photo. I discovered a trick … which is to add water (about 50:50 ratio) when you are doing the second (or third) round of bleaching. Results varies … depending on the exposure of the photo and how fast\/slow you are when washing\/rubbing off the blue-ish stuff after pouring the bleach on it (the negative).<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Do not rub too hard (under running tap). You might rub off some of the images!<\/em><\/p>\n

4. Do not scratch the negative while rubbing it (under running tap). It leaves lots of ugly scratches (but might be cool if done properly).<\/em><\/p>\n

5. Try to put the negative under a running tap … a couple of seconds after pouring the bleach on it.<\/em><\/p>\n

6. You don’t have to rub off all the blue substance. Leave some around the sides for that extra … ermm … effect. \ud83d\ude1b<\/em><\/p>\n

7. Scan the photos once they are dry. Not sure if it was my old eyes playing tricks on me … I realised the photo (bleached version) seem to turn a little dull & darker after a few days. Make very sure the photo is dry before scanning … or some leftover bleach might send the glass surface on your scanner to heaven. \ud83d\ude00<\/em><\/p>\n

One very fun thing about this bleaching technique is that you will never get 2 photos to appear with the same effect. The results depend a lot on how long you leave the bleach on the negative, how long you take to rub off the blue stuff (under a running tap) and also how fast (and even) you rub it off too. As you can see from my photos, there are parts that are yellowish … and those are the parts I was a little slow in rubbing off the blue stuff. Pretty cool to have some of them yellow around, ain’t it? \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

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Here’s the emulsion transferred onto canvas …<\/p>\n

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Honestly … I hate doing these emulsion transfers. I hate working with such fragile things (the jellyfish film) as I usually end up tearing them or causing them to be all rolled up! \ud83d\ude41 Blame my fat old fingers!<\/p>\n

Check out more ‘Unmasking Negativity’ photos at the Impossible Lessons exhibition held at ThirtySix til the end of this week. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

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‘Unmasking Negativity : The Truth Beneath’ is part of the ‘Impossible Lessons’ exhibition where a handful of people get to showcase and share special ‘tricks’ and experiments done using the Impossible Project films and Spectra cameras. I was pretty lost in the beginning … not knowing what to do and … <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[375,2216,1987,24,550,470,293,1974,792,47,2067,2217,1102,2215,992,251,919],"class_list":["post-4960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-with-film","tag-8storeytree","tag-bleach","tag-color-shade","tag-diy","tag-effect","tag-emulsion","tag-experiment","tag-impossible-project","tag-negative","tag-polaroid","tag-px680","tag-rinse","tag-thirtysix","tag-transfer","tag-tutorial","tag-video","tag-vimeo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4960"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5188,"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions\/5188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fuzzyeyeballs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}