Vision ~⊙~ just

is chakra is seeing reality for what it truly is – a hologram, a mental program. It is connecting the dots to understand the illusionary nature of our reality and knowing how to see beyond it.

This is the stem of our psychic senses – our pineal gland. Located right in-between both our brain hemispheres, it is the link to unify them.

This means connecting with their third eye, making a triangle by focusing on both their eyes and the middle of their forehead at once. It’s kind of like zoning out by you’re actually zoning in.So much information is passed back and forth between people when they eye gaze. When you’re doing this with someone and a flood of thoughts come into your head – pay attention for it came for a reason.Your third eye is the seat of wisdom, understanding and multidimensional exploration. Our pineal gland connects us to Source, just as our heart does. Sometimes when you astral project you can see a silver strand connecting to your pineal gland going up into infinity. Activating your third eye requires listening intently and connecting all your thoughts to the bigger picture within consciousness.Not just seeing, but feeling how every single thing is intimately connected and how you can use that larger vision in every day life.Seeing what needs to get done both in the bigger picture for Earth and in your immediate surroundings.

summer break

an Ambrotype

An ambrotype is a weak negative image on glass rendered positive by the addition of a dark background. Frederick Scott Archer, an English sculptor, discovered that light-sensitive silver salts could be mixed with collodion, a sticky liquid that rapidly hardens and which had seen use as a field bandage for the British military.


"Dead Time"
2008
Ambrotype
430 mm x 360 mm
Art Gallery of New South Wales

BEN CAUCHI

This mixture could then be applied to a glass plate and exposed in a camera while still wet; hence the term "wet plate process." In 1854, James Cutting of Boston took out a patent on this process, and Marcus Root coined the name "ambrotype" for it, from the Greek ambrotos (immortal). The process was cheaper and easier than the daguerreotype and contributed to the demise of that earlier process. Like the daguerreotype, an ambrotype was also produced as a unique object, although in principle, a print could be made from the negative on the glass. For an illustration of how a dark background makes the negative ambrotype plate look positive.

Sizes:
Whole plate 16.5cm x 21.5cm
Half plate 11.5cm x 14cm
Quarter plate 8.2cm x 10.8cm
One-sixth plate 6.8cm x 8.2cm
One-ninth plate 5cm x 6.3cm

Using the same case as a daguerreotype, the ambrotype was sealed inside a wooden case or a frame with a bright brass mount and under glass. The case was usually provided with a hinged lid and covered with leather or similar and some American cases were moulded using shellac with wood-fibre and gum and known as a Union case. The cases should not be taken apart or interfered with in any way.

hand coloured ambrotype 1/4 plate

They were displaced by the cheaper carte-de-visite photographs.
There is little to date them, as often no studio is named, so the best way is to see what the people were wearing (not easy). As a rough guide few will be as early as 1854, but large numbers were produced around 1858 before carte-de-visite were produced (1859/1860) and not so many up to 1866 (no real cut off date). So the bulk of them would be c.1858 plus or minus a few years.
The tintype is actually an image produced on a very thin piece of iron, not tin. The process is quite similar to the ambrotype: the light-sensitive collodion mixture is applied to the iron plate and exposed in the camera while still wet. Because the plate has previously been given a black finish, the negative produced by the camera actually results in a positive image. Hamilton Smith, a chemistry professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, discovered this process in 1854. His student Peter Neff financed the development of the process and patented it in 1856.

Tintypes were even cheaper than ambrotypes. They were also durable and could be sent through the mail. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers during the Civil War had tintypes made by studio or itinerant photographers to leave as mementos with loved ones and friends or to send home by mail from the front. Tintypes rapidly supplanted both daguerreotypes and ambrotypes because they were cheaper, easier to produce, and readily transportable. Other names for the tintype include "melainotype" and "ferrotype." Tintypes are also unique items like the daguerreotype, although some studios employed multiple lens cameras to produce multiple images from a single portrait sitting.

Early Photography

Albumen prints outnumber any other type of photographic positive made during the nineteenth century. They have a sepia color and slightly glossy surface. Thin sheets of paper were first coated with egg white and salt, then floated on silver nitrate to make them sensitive to light. The image is created by printing under a negative in sunlight. The finished picture is fixed, washed, and often gold toned before mounting. Invented by Louis Desire Blanquart-Evrard of France in 1850.

The ambrotype process was patented in 1854 and enjoyed great popularity for a few short years, and again during the Civil War. It produced pictures on glass instead of metal plates. Like the earlier daguerreotype, each image is unique, made one-at-a-time in the camera. The glass is flowed with a sticky material known as iodized collodion. It is then sensitized by being dipped into a bath of silver nitrate, and exposed in the camera while still wet. A chemical developer is used to bring out the image. The glass plate is then backed with black material--paint, cloth or paper--and furnished in a case similar to those used for daguerreotypes. The ambrotype process was marketed as an improvement, because the finished image lacked the glittery, elusive reflective quality of daguerreotypes and was therefore easier to view. The detail and tonal range, however, tend to be less impressive than in the earlier process.


Autochrome plates were the invention of Auguste and Louis Lumiere, who patented the process in 1904 and began to market it commercially in 1907. Microscopic grains of potato starch were dyed red, green, and blue-violet, then mixed evenly and coated onto a sheet of glass. A black-and-white emulsion was then flowed over this layer. During exposure, the grains of potato starch on each plate acted as millions of tiny filters. The light-sensitive emulsion was then reversal processed into a positive transparency. When viewed, light passes through the emulsion and is filtered to the proper color by the starch grains. The resulting mosaic of glowing dots on glass gives autochromes the look of pointillist paintings.

Calotype was the name given to the first practical negative-positive process of photography. Capable of producing multiple copies of any given image, the calotype (also called Talbotype) was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in September of 1840. An earlier Talbot invention, photogenic drawing, was also capable of creating photographic images in the camera, but was quite slow and could not be used for photographing people or anything that moved. To make a calotype, plain sheets of writing paper are coated with a solution of silver nitrate, dried, then dipped in potassium iodide to form silver iodide. After being dried again, the paper is floated on a mixture containing silver nitrate and gallic acid. The same mixture is used to develop the negative image after exposure. Following fixing in hypo, this paper negative was generally waxed for transparency and used to make salt prints.

Carbon prints, patented in 1864 by Joseph Wilson Swan, offered a permanent image without grain. The process was capable of making exquisite prints with a wide tonal range. Negatives were printed onto a "tissue" containing carbon and other pigments in a gelatin base. The gelatin had previously been made light-sensitive by a bath of potassium bichromate. After washing, the image on the tissue was transferred to a paper base and the backing of the tissue was stripped off.


Collodion negatives--see Wet Plate

Collodion prints used the same sticky nitrocelluluse emulsion, collodion, as ambrotypes. This was mixed with silver chloride and coated onto paper. The surface could be matte, glossy, or semi-gloss like an albumen print. The whites of the image generally lack the yellowish cast of albumen prints. Collodion prints are difficult to distinguish from other silver prints made circa 1890-1910, and usually require testing by a trained conservator to identify with certainty.

The cyanotype process was invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel but was most popular around the turn of the century. The brilliant blue images have a matte surface. Because iron salts are used (rather than silver compounds) for the light-sensitive material, cyanotypes are highly stable. Architectural blueprints were made by the same process.

The daguerreotype process, the first practical form of photography, was made public in August of 1839, but seldom able in its earliest form to produce portraits. This was due to the lengthy exposure time required. A daguerreotype is made on a sheet of silver-plated copper. The silver surface is polished to a mirror-like brilliance. The plate is then sensitized over iodine vapor, exposed in the camera, and developed with mercury vapor. By 1840, experimenters had succeeded at increasing the sensitivity of the process by using chlorine or bromine fumes in addition to the iodine vapor. The earliest daguerreotypes tend to have bluish or slate grey tones; a brown-toning process called "gilding" came into widespread (but not universal) use late in 1840. Daguerreotypes have exceptionally fragile surfaces and for this reason, they were always furnished behind glass in frames or small folding cases.

Dilute albumen print an early variation (first proposed by the inventor of albumen paper in 1850) in which the albumen is diluted with salt water in order to reduce the gloss. The resulting image can have a matte finish like a calotype, with the finer detail and tonality of an albumen print.

Gelatin-silver see silver print

Lightly-albumenized print see Dilute albumen print

Melainotype original name for the tintype process.

Photogenic drawing was the name William Henry Fox Talbot gave to his initial photographic invention. As early as 1834, Talbot was making salt prints by placing lace, leaves and other objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing it to the sun. Although Talbot used photogenic drawing paper in the camera--creating negatives by 1835--exposures in the camera often took hours, so most photogenic drawings were made by the superposition of objects.

Photogravure is a photomechanical process; that is, one in which the finished prints are made in ink on a printing press. The method, one of the finest ever developed, transferred the photographic image to a copper printing plate, which was then etched to retain ink in areas corresponding to the blacks of the picture. Photogravure was invented by Karl Klic in Austria in 1879.

Platinum prints are among the most beautiful and permanent of all photographs. They provide a wide range of subtle grey tones, and the image is embedded in the fibers of the paper--instead of in an emulsion coating the paper surface. Thus, like salt prints and cyanotypes, the surfaces of platinum prints have no natural sheen or gloss. Because the finished image is made of metallic platinum which is highly stable, these photographs are resistant to fading. Their tones are generally silvery to black, but warmer brown tones were also achieved.

Salt print refers to the positive printing procedure invented by Talbot. The negative is placed in contact with a sheet of writing paper which has been floated on salt water and then coated with silver nitrate. After exposure to sunlight, the finished print is fixed in "hypo', washed and dried. Unless they have been glazed or varnished, salt prints have a matte surface, with the image actually embedded in the fibers of the paper. Their tones can range from reddish brown to chestnut brown.


Silver print is a term used here and elsewhere for a variety of processes, many of which cannot be precisely identified without laboratory testing. The light-sensitive compounds can be silver chloride or silver bromide or a mixture of these. They can be coated onto the paper in a layer of gelatin or collodion; their surfaces can be matte, glossy, or somewhere in between; and their tones can mimic the silvery greys of platinum prints, the warm browns of albumen prints, or a range of other colors. Most of the billions of black-and-white photographs made during the 20th century have been gelatin-silver prints.


Talbotype see Calotype

Tintypes were the invention of Prof. Hamilton Smith of Ohio. They begin as thin sheets of iron, covered with a layer of black paint. This serves as the base for the same iodized collodion coating and silver nitrate bath used in the ambrotype process. First made in 1856, millions were produced well into the twentieth century. When tintypes were finished in the same sorts of mats and cases used for ambrotypes, it can be almost impossible to distinguish which process was used without removing the image to examine the substrate.

Wet Plate the name given to a process invented by Frederick Scott Archer of England in 1851. Widely used to produce negatives but also employed in a modified form to produce positives (see ambrotypes and tintypes). As a negative process, a piece of clear glass is coated with a very thin layer of iodized collodion (made from gun-cotton [nitrocellulose] dissolved in ether and alcohol, mixed with potassium iodide). The coated plate is dipped in a silver solution in the darkroom which makes it light-sensitive. After this, the plate must be immediately exposed in a camera. The exposure needs to be completed before the chemicals on the plate have time to dry out--hence the name of the process. After development and fixing, the negative can be printed on any material. Most wet plate negatives, however, were used to make prints on albumen paper.

Woodburytype a photomechanical process in which the completed prints are not made with light-sensitive materials. One of the most beautiful and permanent of all methods of producing prints in quantity, the Woodburytype process was also among the most difficult. A light-sensitive gelatin material is exposed to a negative, resulting in a three-dimensional relief-map of the image. Then the difficult part: applying huge pressure (with a hydraulic press) on the gelatin relief to make an impression in a block of lead. The lead mold is used to make the prints, which have exquisite tonality and a slightly raised surface.

Pinhole

Using the pinhole technique is one of the most authentic ways to record photographic images.
The technique is based on the principle of the camera obscura which is centuries old. Basically it's nothing more then a lightproof box with, in the middle of one side, a tiny little hole instead of a lens.
The light works its way through the pinhole right into the enclosed room and that is how at the opposite side of the pinhole an image appears which is upside down. We can preserve the image by putting material which is sensitive to light at the side where the image shows up and develop it after exposure.
However photography was only invented in 1839 the principle of the pinhole has been known since ages. As early as the 4th century B.C. this phenomenon was mentioned by Aristotle in one of his writings. Light falling through a small opening between the leaves of a tree gives a perfect projection of the sun on the ground. Even though the opening between the leaves has a shape which is irregular and is not perfectly round, yet the image on the ground is. Aristotle could never explain this.
This happened much later in the 16th century, because scientists were
frequently experimenting with the pinhole technique.
All this started in the 13th and 14th century.
Different scientists used the pinhole principle in order to study the eclipse of the sun and the wave-lenght of the light.
In the 15th century the technique was used by artists as an aid to make their drawings.
Leonardo da Vinci was the first to hit upon the idea of using a box for it.
He described how
one could get an image on a transparant screen and trace it on the outside. But it was not until the 16th century until this idea had come to its full development.
Lenses excisted in this century but people still used the pinhole principle to study the sun.
Scientists often stared through their (pinhole)telescopes and looked directly into the bright sunlight.
As a result they suffered from blindness. Just to spare the eyes, scientists started to use a camera obscura (darkroom) so they could study the projected image of the sun instead of looking at it directly. From this moment on it didn't take long before artists started to use the camera obscura frequently.
In the 18th century the principle of the camera obscura becomes generally known and even travellers are starting to use the phenomenon. They are using the portable version of the camera obscura just to trace the things they see during their journeys. These "snap-shots" are pasted into their book of travels and kept as a souvenir.
If people didn't possess a camera one payed money to enter a permanent camera-room. Here the surroundings could be seen by means of a rotating mirror. The moving images were projected on a white table.
All this was very popular until the official invention of photography in 1839.
From this moment on there was no need to trace images anymore and the pinhole principle was completely forgotten.
Until the most famous pinhole picture of that time showed up, a photograph of 1890 from George Davison, The Onion Field. This picture won the highest price at the annual exhibition of the Photographic Society in London. This particular picture was the beginning of the popularity of the pinhole camera which would last for several years.
There were some american companies that put pinhole cameras on the market and even a
special pinhole disc that could replace the lens of a regular camera.
From the 20th century the pinhole camera lost popularity. Making images with a camera like this was considered to be inferior. The reason of this was most probably the growing need for speed and mass production of photographic equipment. Finally the principle was only used to teach people the basic techniques of photography. Between 1940 and 1960 the pinhole technique was completely forgotten.
From 1960 until now pinhole photography is being used sporadically by artists.

The pencil of nature

en plein air. with the Lord Fox Talbot ...

Dear Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot1800 - 1877BackgroundTalbot's connection with Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire is well known. This was originally a nunnery, founded in 1232. Talbot's family had lived there since the sixteenth century, but due to the family's financial circumstances, they were not able to afford to live there at the time of his birth.
Talbot later returned to Lacock Abbey, and there he carried out many of his early photography experiments. The building now houses a museum dedicated to the work of Talbot.
Talbot is best remembered for his photographic discoveries, but he also had expertise in mathematics and optics and was a keen astronomer and archaeologist, with a good knowledge of ancient Greek and Hebrew.
Talbot's photographs, negatives documents and equipment were donated by his grand-daughter in 1937, some to the Science Museum , some to the Royal Photographic Society।

The Calotype Process

Conceptually, and in many ways, the photographic technique employed by Adamson and Hill was very similar to that still in use today. A negative was exposed in the camera, developed in a dark room and then printed on sensitive paper. Their cameras, while wooden and large, are easy to relate to modern cameras. However, their sensitive materials were quite different from ours in one important aspect. Modern photographic film and paper are highly refined highly technological products made under strict controls in a factory setting. In addition to the other problems they faced, Adamson and Hill had to make each and every sheet of negative or print material by hand. There are no significant records of their particular working practices. However, we know they were in close touch with the art's inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot (especially through their mutual friend, Sir David Brewster) and it can be assumed that their practice built on Talbot's approach.
The calotype negative process was sometimes called the Talbotype, after its inventor. It was not Talbot's first photographic process (introduced in 1839), but it is the one for which he became most known. Henry Talbot devised the calotype in the autumn of 1840, perfected it by the time of its public introduction in mid-1841, and made it the subject of a patent (the patent did not extend to Scotland).

The base of a calotype negative, rather than the glass or film to which we have become accustomed, was high quality writing paper. The sheet of paper was carefully selected to have a smooth and uniform texture and, wherever possible, to avoid the watermark. The first stage, conducted in candlelight, was to prepare what Talbot called his iodized paper. The paper was washed over with a solution of silver nitrate and dried by gentle heat. When nearly dry, it was soaked in a solution of potassium iodide for two or three minutes, rinsed and again dried. As long as this iodized paper was stored carefully, it could be kept for some time, so it was generally prepared in batches ahead of time.

Immediately before taking a photograph, a fresh solution of gallo-nitrate of silver was mixed up. This was made from equal quantities of a solution of silver nitrate and one of gallic acid; the solution was unstable and had to be used right away. Under weak candlelight, a sheet of iodized paper was coated with this solution, left to sit for about thirty seconds and then dipped in water. It was then partially dried in the dark, often using blotting paper. The calotype paper could be employed completely dry, but was more sensitive when moist, and in any case had to be exposed in the camera within a few hours of preparation (Talbot found that he could sometimes put it away for future use but its keeping qualities were never predictable).

Under near-total darkness, the sensitive calotype paper was loaded in the camera. It was exposed to the scene, sometimes for as little as ten seconds, usually for a time closer to a minute, and sometimes for tens of minutes. If one were to examine the sheet of paper after withdrawing it from the camera, no image would be seen (just as no image is visible on modern film when it is first removed from the camera). An invisible latent image was formed by the action of light. A fresh solution of gallo-nitrate of silver was brought into play. Washed over the sheet of paper in a darkened room, it developed a visible image, usually within a few seconds. When the operator judged that the development had proceeded far enough, the paper was then washed over with a fixing liquid. This was sometimes a solution of potassium bromide and sometimes a solution of hypo (similar to modern fixers). Washing and drying completed the process.

At this point, there would be a negative image, deep brown or black in colour, on one surface of the writing paper. Being plain paper, the temptation to correct errant details in pencil was natural to most operators. The artist Hill, and possibly the technician Adamson, frequently used pencil or ink to retouch the negatives. Sometimes the dried negative was waxed to make it more transparent.

Strictly speaking, the term calotype referred only to the developed negative process. Prints could also be made on calotype paper, exposed and then developed much like modern photographic papers, but this was a more complicated process and led to what were considered unsatisfactory cold print tones. Only a few prints were made experimentally using the calotype process itself. Instead, the common practice was to turn to Talbot's original photogenic drawing paper, invented by him in 1834 and the one first introduced to the public in 1839.

Talbot's original process was based on the same type of smooth writing paper employed in making the negatives. The printing paper was first soaked in a solution of common table salt, dried, and then brushed on one side with a solution of silver nitrate. This embedded light-sensitive silver chloride within the surface fibres of the paper. The dry paper was placed under the finished calotype negative, sandwiched under glass, and then placed in bright light. Within perhaps fifteen minutes, a visible image had formed on the print paper. It was then fixed, most often in hypo, washed and dried. The image would be present in rich brown tones, sometimes tending towards red, sometimes towards purple, depending on various factors and rarely fully controllable. These prints did not have a widely accepted name in the 1840s (they were sometimes called transfers). Today, they are generally called salted paper prints or salt prints. Like the calotype negatives, these plain paper prints could be easily retouched in ink or wash. However, unlike some of their contemporaries, Hill & Adamson preferred to do their work on the negatives, and modified the prints very little.

Lacock Abbey UK

... my journey starts here : ...