Monthly Shooting Assignment - March and April 2014 - SALT

Bertus said:

Here is my contribution for the Salt MSA: Salt storage for Road sliperiness, right from darkroom!

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Hi Bertus,
Nice series about salt. I especially liked the second image. It looks like waves on the ocean. Just cover the window (upper left) and look again at the image. Like a tsunami of salt.
Great contribution to this MSA! What camera & film did you use?
Bert from Holland

Bertus said:

Here is my contribution for the Salt MSA: Salt storage for Road sliperiness, right from darkroom! Bronica sq ai and 110 mm. Ilford fp4 outside and kodak tmax at 800 asa inside. Ilford mg paper.

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These are great!! I wish this MSA came out at the beginning of the winter, they have piles of salt for the roads! But not anymore

Bertus said:

Here is my contribution for the Salt MSA: Salt storage for Road sliperiness, right from darkroom! Bronica sq ai and 110 mm. Ilford fp4 outside and kodak tmax at 800 asa inside. Ilford mg paper.

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Hi Bertus, I really like the first two, and especially the second one. Well done!

...
My idea for this MSA is "experimental", but the weather is finally nice so I'm planning to go out tomorrow and try. It's a hike... not sure yet if I'll try to make 1 or 2 negatives. I've been looking forward to trying ever since I scouted the location! Going to be fun to try even if it doesn't work.

Here is a salt print of a salt evaporation pond. After making the exposure, I collected water from within this scene and used it to coat the paper. The print is made from water that is in this photograph.



Details and thoughts, for interest:

Thanks to Thomas and this MSA, I discovered the Napa Sonoma salt marshes and enjoyed exploring several of its parts. The marsh includes about 13000 acres that were once used in salt production. The evaporative ponds were used in the 1950's by the Leslie Salt company and later by Cargill Salt works. Now most of it serves as a wildlife refuge. This particular pond is over 300 acres and was one of the final evaporation pools before processing into salt. There is a picturesque old train station nearby that I intend to visit later with my camera! Also, dogs are allowed here after the nesting season is over and my dog (and avatar ) Mango will be thrilled to help me explore many miles of trails here!

Photo Details:

I made three 8x10 paper negatives. This one was made with a fixed focus foamcore camera. The lens is a Bausch and Lomb Rapid Rectilinear from a 100 year old Kodak 3A camera. It covers 8x10 with the front lens element removed. Since the negatives were intended for salt printing, no contrast controls were used. My MSA entry is the salt print above, but I would like to show you the negative too because it looks neat. Here's the camera and the negative ( click to see the negative large... it looks cool! ):


Not MSA entries, but here's another made a with a pinhole camera, inverted scan of the negative. You can see Mt. Tamalpais on the horizon.



And finally one with a sliding box foamcore camera, also a negative scan:



This sliding box camera is capable of making the best negatives, but I didn't trust myself to get it right for the main picture, so I used the fixed focus I have more confidence with.

Salt Print Details:

I'd read that salinity of these ponds ranges from about 2.5% ( same as SF bay ) up to hyper-salinity levels. Right now at the end of our rainy season, the pond is full,so it should be on the low end, but as I was hiking to the pond I saw fish and tadpoles in a creek that empties into it, and when I collected the water I saw green algae growing and insects swimming underwater. That made me think the water might not be very salty! So I decided to try my first salt print using it undiluted,and also had (there was a url link here which no longer exists) figuring out that it probably is a bit less than 2%. So as luck would have it, my print came out nice on the first try!

I brought 500ml of water home, boiled it in a mason jar in my microwave then filtered it twice. After that I added 1.5g of citric acid, to hopefully help prevent fogging.

Canson Universal Sketch paper, cut to 7x11 inches. Floated for 3 minutes on this solution, then dried overnight. Then I brushed on 1ml of 12% silver nitrate, 6% citric acid solution, and let it dry in the dark for 3 hours.

Exposure in the contact frame: 2.5 late afternoon hours aimed at North open sky. I was planning on ½ hour direct sun, but a cloud covered the sun so it was 20 minutes aimed at that cloud. Then the sun came back out at 5PM and I let it go another 30 minutes directly aimed at the sun.

Wash 2 x 5 minutes in water with a pinch of salt, then 2 x 4 minutes in hypo: ½ teaspoon per 4oz water. Quick rinse then 3 minutes in 1% sodium sulfate. Washed in frequent changes of water for an hour. Then dried overnight flat on a piece of glass.

I had a lot of fun doing all of this and learning something new about the area I live in.

Well after that elaborate an amazing submission, I guess I don't think I'm even going to bother competing with that, truly truly a lot of effort and I don't think I could possibly beat it :/

Stone there are still 3 weeks!

I wrote so many details that made it sound like a lot of effort. Really it was a huge amount of fun!

Remember what you said about feeling like a kid watching your giant pinhole negative develop?? That's what I felt like when I saw the print emerging... magic!! We've got the greatest hobby, have fun with it!

And Stone, it is an assignment, not a "winner take all" exercise!

NedL said:

Here is a salt print of a salt evaporation pond. After making the exposure, I collected water from within this scene and used it to coat the paper. The print is made from water that is in this photograph.

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Ned!! Wow!! You really outdid yourself. A beautiful salt print of a beautiful subject (not just a silly cow ...).
And you really made out on the theme, printing with your subject itself. Neat interpretation of the MSA theme. Its a triplet: subject, chemicals and print!

NedL said:

(...) My MSA entry is the salt print above, but I would like to show you the negative too because it looks neat. Here's the camera and the negative ( click to see the negative large... it looks cool! ):

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View attachment 85943 View attachment 85944[/QUOTE]
The negative is also very nice in itself. Invert the scan, make a digital positive (as an inter-negative) and print a nice carbon print with it: "Salt by night" you can call it. Should be great too.

I also like the pinhole image. If you would make a salt print of it also, it might be as good or even better than the one above.

NedL said:

(...) I had a lot of fun doing all of this and learning something new about the area I live in.

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That I can imagine!! It must be fun and relaxing, sitting at the pont, reflecting on cameras, life, prints and who knows what.
I could sit there a whole day myself - only to make these three shots. That's why I like to wander around with only my pinhole camera loaded with 120 roll film, only to make 4 panorama shots (4x17 cm). Life is out there - waiting for us to be photographed ...

In short: congratulations on this beautiful and worthy contribution to this MSA. Very inspiring. You've got my vote.

Bert from Holland

MattKing said:

And Stone, it is an assignment, not a "winner take all" exercise!

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There's a point where you bow to greatness and become a viewer to learn for the future.

StoneNYC said:

There's a point where you bow to greatness and become a viewer to learn for the future.

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edit: "There's a point where you bow to greatness and become a participant to learn for the future."

TheToadMen said:

edit: "There's a point where you bow to greatness and become a participant to learn for the future."

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I took this image because of two reasons: Of course I wanted to contribute to the MSA 'Salt', but also I opened a pack of Polaroid T-54 (Expired 05/06) which I had since a long time in my refrigerator. I bought it about 2009, together with a Model 545i Film Holder - and now I thought I might be a good idea to try if both work - in view of the 'New 55' Kickstarter project - and they do work fine!

Equipment Used: Linhof Kardan Color, Schneider Symmar 150mm/f5.6, 33cm total lens image distance; Exposure: 0.5 sec at f22 (incident light measurement 1/10 sec at f 22); Film & Developer: Polaroid T-54, 100 ASA instant b/w film

I here show this image also in an 'image only' version. Text see post above...

It's been interesting to view all of the submissions so far. Still a couple of days to participate in this somewhat abstract topic. I look forward to reviewing it all in the following days and make a decision.

Can't wait to see what your choices will be. I have faith in your opinion, but I'm curious nevertheless.
Good luck, I hope you sleep well the next few nights ...
Bert from Holland

Thomas Bertilsson said:

It's been interesting to view all of the submissions so far. Still a couple of days to participate in this somewhat abstract topic. I look forward to reviewing it all in the following days and make a decision.

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Life has been... Trying... As of late, so I'll have to have my first submission as my only, doubt I'll get more done in the next day.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the chosen winner, this was a good one.

Ok here is my last minute submission... I hope it is not too late! I took this image just an hour ago, fighting the vanishing light before dawn...

You may call it 'conceptual photography' - but I call it showing a model which I set up to explain the nanometer for public outreach in our physics department.

It is based on - of course - salt! and explained as follows:

You look at this small grain of salt in the loupe - a cube with about 0.5 mm edge length (you can compare the scale paper).

Then you imagine it enlarged so much that the chlorine (or sodium) atoms (which have a distance of 0.4 nm) get the size of pinheads (about 3 mm in distance) which is shown with this cube-corner of plaster made in a replica technique. (One can 'touch' these pinhead-atoms.) - This is an enlargement by a factor of 7,500,000.

How large will then be the grain of salt?

I leave the calculation up to you... But it is no accident that the view goes out into the landscape with a few km distance...

Equipment Used: Linhof Kardan Color, Schneider Super-Angulon 75mm f5.6, a lot of lens and back tilt; Exposure: 5 sec at f32 (the loupe got some additional ilumination with a torch light); Film & Developer: Polaroid T-54, 100 ASA instant b/w film (I also made an exposure on 4x5 TriX film - but for this last minute submission the Polaroid has to be sufficient...)

Yes I did the calculation and it is astonishing to visualize. That is a very good way to conceptualize the relationship between the size of a salt crystal and the size of one NaCl atom! Wow.

Here in Minnesota there are currently 52 minutes left of April. I have a commitment of delivering 22 perfected print scans to a magazine for publishing by tomorrow night, and I only have about 10 finished so far. So today and tomorrow I don't have a chance to review all of the entries. I'm letting you know up front, so you know why this won't happen until the weekend, most likely.

Again, thanks to all of you who participated! I kind of wish I had had time to participate with a blind entry myself, of course not competing, but just trying it out to see if something interesting could be created.
My leans are heavily towards the artistic side of things, but I will attempt to be as unbiased and objective as I possibly can when I review and decide on a winner of this round of Monthly Shooting Assignments.

I wish there was enough time for me to photograph rubbing salt in a wound. Can't believe the Wild just beat the Avs. I did not see that coming.

mooseontheloose said:

I wish there was enough time for me to photograph rubbing salt in a wound. Can't believe the Wild just beat the Avs. I did not see that coming.

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Me neither, Rachelle! I am as surprised as you are. After the regular conference I expected Colorado to wipe the floor with Minnesota. Wonder how they'll do against Chicago.

One thing I like to mention in connection with this NaCl cube-corner sculpture: I built it within the 'Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts' 2003, class of Günter Unterburger - a great artist and teacher.

I do not know if building this sculpture so long ago prevents the photography from yesterday evening from being included - if so, then even better I mention it, besides the credits I wanted to give to Günter.

The photo itself should be made this month, not the subject.
The cow I shot (analogue, not ballistic that is) was also made several years ago

Bert - great answer, which gave me a big grin!
Heinz

Heinz said:

Bert - great answer, which gave me a big grin!
Heinz

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Then today is already a good day!