Back in the 80's when I had a darkroom, I came up a fun idea. I put various objects, like this dragonfly wing, into the enlarger -- instead of a negative or slide -- and printed it on black and white paper. I called it 'Zero generation photography' and wrote an article about it in Petersen's Photographic Magazine. Usually, you'd start with a negative and end up with a positive image on photographic paper. In this case, I started with a positive, so to speak, and turned it into a negative. This is why the background is black and the wing is white. Some other things I tried were a thin slice of cucumber, a thin slide of a kiwi fruit, various flowers that had thin petals to allow light to penetrate, and a feather.
2 Comments
Nov 25, 2024, 9:48:49 AM
Jim - Thank you, Anni. I've always appreciated Man Ray's work. He was truly a pioneer in photography.
Nov 25, 2024, 5:33:01 AM
Anni - This is cool! But you should look up 'rayographs' - that's what you've created here. It is an old technique but it was further developed by Man Ray in the early 1900's, hence the name!