Photo Educator

Looking for inspiration to teach alt processes to College students

bhillier said:

Looking for inspiration to teach alt processes to College students

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The easiest and safest alternative process for studends is cyanotype. For health and safety reasons their are quite a few that you should avoid.

Welcome to Photrio, @bhillier ! There's lots of people who do alt process here, so you'll no doubt find the inspiration you're looking for.

cliveh said:

The easiest and safest alternative process for studends is cyanotype. For health and safety reasons their are quite a few that you should avoid.

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Yes, we teach Cyanotypes. But looking to add Lith printing and Palladium. Also, B&W film development and silver printing. Maybe Polaroid transfer too. Zebra dry plates look like fun.

Welcome aboard @bhillier ! I find that simply browsing / following the threads on this forum offers a lot of inspiration. For instance, check out @Raghu Kuvempunagar's recently introduced Ferroblend process: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-ferroblend-process.215995 It would be very suitable as an extension to your existing cyanotype classes.
I think there's lots of interesting stuff happening in the territory of direct pigment prints using binders like PVA and also plant-based proteins. Might be worthwhile looking into. Or maybe something like Zerochrome SbQ or Calvin Grier's Printmaker's Friend, which is ready to go out of the bottle.

Have you seen Photrio moderator @Andrew O'Neill 's YouTube channel?
Found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/andy8x10

Welcome to Photrio

@bhillier I taught Alt. as well as good old gelatin silver to high school students, and quite enjoyed it... although high schoolers can present certain challenges. College should be easier, as they chose to be there. For Alt. I taught Cyanotypes, and Gum. Yes, we used dichromates, but all precautions were taken. I taught them to handle/use it safely, always under my supervision. I also taught Vandykes. We used a hybrid workflow, either shooting on 35mm, and with DSLR's, and made digital inkjet negatives (I made the digital negs, while they watched...Too much of a learning curve, and not enough time in a semester!)For gelatin silver work, we had a well stocked darkroom, with 10 LPL enlargers. That was a full on unit, taking up about half of the semester. If you can get your hands on a beater LF camera (I got a couple of them donated to us), you could get yourself a box of XRAY film, and contact print them on gelatin silver, or an Alt. process. XRAY is cheap. I've got heaps of videos on my youtube channel, if you want to see different processes...Sorry, no Lith or Palladium

Welcome to Photrio!

It's been almost 30 years since I was in the old college darkroom, I'm trying to remember how my professor decided what would work for the whole class, and what would work as small group stuff.
I think Lith could cause a bottle neck in a group darkroom.
My professor did Carbon printing as an extra-curricular "workshop" it was after regular school hours and planned a few months out.
I wish you success with an arts program, it seems like a lot of schools are unwilling to kick any money into that sort of thing.

koraks said:

Welcome aboard @bhillier ! I find that simply browsing / following the threads on this forum offers a lot of inspiration. For instance, check out @Raghu Kuvempunagar's recently introduced Ferroblend process: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-ferroblend-process.215995 It would be very suitable as an extension to your existing cyanotype classes.

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Thank you for the shout out.

@bhillier: A partial list of processes that you can read and get inspired in this forum: