Toronto Farm Project

Bob Carnie · Jul 8, 2010

Tonight I have the pleasure of meeting with 10 - 20 photographer artists, who are determined along with me to work with digital negatives, Lambda Black and White as well Inkjet negatives to produce alternative prints.

Along with a very decent group of mentors/advisors from around the world * some from this very forum,APUG and LLF * who will give us encouragement and guidance.

Our crew will research, cull information, compile into working books , and ultimately each worker who decides to join my little club will exhibit the fruits of our labour.
Currently our target processes are: multiple hit colour gum, multiple hit carbon, platinum, gum over platinum, cyanotype, gum over cyanotype, lambda fibre silver prints and of course enlarger silver prints.

This has been a long time coming, the final piece of the pie will be a Aztek scanner installed by Eiger Studio's which will be in place hopefully by the end of this year.

My group, consists of staff around me who love photography, past staff members who have moved on , friends/clients of Elevator who have shown great interest in printing, and as well a couple of very young film students who are taking internships with us right now.

We will post our progress here on Hybrid and LLF as I feel these two forums contain many , many wonderful people from parts unknown that would be interested in what we do.

The Farm Project name has been taken on the net** rats** but within a couple of months we will come up with a handle and have a website that will show who is involved, what we are doing and basic propaganda.

I am really looking forward to this and hope to share the experience here.

Bob Carnie · Jul 24, 2010

Ok Update Folks

We had our second meeting , 8 showed up with others on vacation, so I am pleased.

We have broken into a bunch of different groups , each process being a group and a leader in each group with helpers.

We have decided to concentrate on the following process.

Digital Neg - lambda exposed real black and white film processed in giant processor.
Lambda Fujicrystal Archive clear film developed in RA 4
Inkjet Negative - most likely using QTR or Nelson Method.

Carbon- lots of interest in this and the leader and I will be visiting Sandy this fall for more intensive training to then pass on to group, I attended Photostock last year and Sandys course was first rate.

Gum Colour- Lots of interest in this and I want to specialize on this, Project Basho has something going with colour gum in Philidelphia and a group of us are wanting to attend the workshop.

Platinum and Gum over- Huge interest and we are able to start immediately thanks to Kerik and Ikes course last year at Photostock.

Silver Enlarger and Lambda silver wet- lots of the youngsters want to get their feet wet with this so I am happy, one of the group is a master Grade 5 printer and will help the group.

so here it is , starting off and lots of willingness to work.. We will be setting up a website for this project but not for quite a while so I will keep announcing our progress here.

regards
Bob

Molli · Dec 9, 2011

Hi Bob,

I got here via your APUG discussion regarding Lith paper for your students printing from digital negatives (here (there was a url link here which no longer exists)) and am interested to here how your Toronto Farm Project is coming along. From the sounds of things on APUG and with the scope of your project in this thread, I imagine you're one very busy individual!
Given your students images displayed in the aforementioned thread, I'm really interested to see more of what you've been up to. So, how's this project coming along?

Molli

Bob Carnie · Dec 9, 2011

Hi Molli

We have gotten to the stage where we are making silver digi negs and inkjet digi negs and contacting them onto various processes.
From the digital negatives we are able to contact onto any silver paper and get enlarger quality prints, these negs can come from any source capture.
From the inkjet negatives we have made very lovely lith, solarization prints on silver paper, we have made carbon, gum and Pt pd and gumovers as well as cyanotypes.
I have not tried making silver prints from digital inkjet negs as I am able to expose directly onto fibre paper via a lamda laser exposing device so I never felt the need with the inkjet negatives. Though I am working on a project(very large) where I am making silver negs to contact on Ilford Warmtone paper in case an original negative has too many flaws to make a good quality enlarger print. This we have had great success.

regarding The Toronto Farm Project, we started with 10 participants and it has one year later ended up with four of us really active and working weekly on experimentation. We now are making some cash via workshops or private printing to cover our chemistry, paper, costs and are working on building up to buy a bulk film order from Harmon.

We have posted results on various threads, success has been slow and as you may understand trying to nail this many processes is a large task and we are still at it. We work 7 days a week and are happy to do so.

thank you for asking about the TFP.

regards

Bob

Molli said:
Hi Bob,

I got here via your APUG discussion regarding Lith paper for your students printing from digital negatives (here (there was a url link here which no longer exists)) and am interested to here how your Toronto Farm Project is coming along. From the sounds of things on APUG and with the scope of your project in this thread, I imagine you're one very busy individual!
Given your students images displayed in the aforementioned thread, I'm really interested to see more of what you've been up to. So, how's this project coming along?

Molli

Molli · Dec 9, 2011

Bob, that sounds fantastic! I have to say, you're doing a brilliant job of inspiring others to make use of the best of both worlds. From what I read of your students participating in your Lith workshop, you're basically expanding people's options in creativity. I love reading on the net of the revival of old processes and the thought of kids with their iPhones and digicams getting into the darkroom is so exciting.

With regard to this:

I have not tried making silver prints from digital inkjet negs as I am able to expose directly onto fibre paper via a lamda laser exposing device so I never felt the need with the inkjet negatives. Though I am working on a project(very large) where I am making silver negs to contact on Ilford Warmtone paper in case an original negative has too many flaws to make a good quality enlarger print. This we have had great success.

This is my primary interest in lurking around and finally signing up to DPUG. I don't know how well scanned images which have been restored will translate into a digital negative; but I'm sincerely hoping that one day I can get those prints back onto silver paper where they belong. I've had a few of the restorations I've done printed on inkjets but it just doesn't feel 'right'. They look too 'plasticky', for want of a better word. That's in no way a denigration of inkjet prints, it's simply that these digital files are scans of photos taken in the early 1900s through until about 1950. It was while working on these prints on the computer that I fell in love with black and white photos - those earlier photos have stood the test of time. The paper is beautiful. Unlike family photos from the 70s and 80s which are just horrible today. Working with those earlier photos is what got me out from behind the computer into the darkroom... and now I want to take those images back into the darkroom - just to be contrary to most people's workflow

Reading about your work and your processes is really inspirational. If it's not too much trouble, could you direct me with some links (or the terms I should Google for) to more information regarding your Toronto Farm Project?

Bob Carnie · Dec 9, 2011

You may be very happy with inkjet negs to silver prints , specifically if you are reviving old prints , because the range of density's are already established with the print.

The Toronto Farm Project is currently a closed group or website, we continue to work, but we have done nothing with it since its birth.
Once we are ready, we will open it up to the photographic community.
Right now it is full of data I have compiled over the last ten years and most of the content is not mine.
The goal is for us to glean from the content, apply it , make processes work as described by our favourite authors, and then prepare our own versions of each process.
We are making You Tube type videos of each process once we feel we have nailed a proceedure, as well some of our larger projects we are doing a how to make each print type of offering.
We hope to have this as a go to website for the kind of work we do, as well a host site for our clients and their work. We may even sell edition prints from this site.

We have a few mentors that have helped us and are still helping us muddle through and we will credit them as we go along.
Ask me in another year and I will be able to fill you in.

Molli said:
Bob, that sounds fantastic! I have to say, you're doing a brilliant job of inspiring others to make use of the best of both worlds. From what I read of your students participating in your Lith workshop, you're basically expanding people's options in creativity. I love reading on the net of the revival of old processes and the thought of kids with their iPhones and digicams getting into the darkroom is so exciting.

With regard to this:

This is my primary interest in lurking around and finally signing up to DPUG. I don't know how well scanned images which have been restored will translate into a digital negative; but I'm sincerely hoping that one day I can get those prints back onto silver paper where they belong. I've had a few of the restorations I've done printed on inkjets but it just doesn't feel 'right'. They look too 'plasticky', for want of a better word. That's in no way a denigration of inkjet prints, it's simply that these digital files are scans of photos taken in the early 1900s through until about 1950. It was while working on these prints on the computer that I fell in love with black and white photos - those earlier photos have stood the test of time. The paper is beautiful. Unlike family photos from the 70s and 80s which are just horrible today. Working with those earlier photos is what got me out from behind the computer into the darkroom... and now I want to take those images back into the darkroom - just to be contrary to most people's workflow

Reading about your work and your processes is really inspirational. If it's not too much trouble, could you direct me with some links (or the terms I should Google for) to more information regarding your Toronto Farm Project?

Molli · Dec 9, 2011

Well then, I'm looking forward to seeing how this all turns out in a year or so Hopefully, by then I'll have Broadband rather than a pathetic dial-up net connection and will actually be able to watch those YouTube presentations!
Best of luck, Bob - I hope it's all smooth sailing and a lot of fun for you.

Bob Carnie · Dec 10, 2011

Thank you , stay tuned so to speak.

Toronto Farm Project

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