The Pop

Last week I asked Andrew Ross to do some printing for me. What with this nasty digital revolution we're having it's getting more and more difficult to source traditional silver gelatin products - especially in a small market such as New Zealand. Add to that the fact that more and more manufacturers of traditional silver gelatin products go bust as the years go by, and you can see that sad old-school buggers like me are digging themselves a hole.

As happened at the end of last year when I showed some of this work, I struggled to source the specific paper I use for these prints. Fortunately I found some in Australia and purchased enough to cover the printing for my Auckland showing of the series. But I made some new images for the Wellington outing, and again I struggled to source the specific paper I use for these prints. The main reason being that the company that makes it went bust in January and no one told me - rude bloody Czechs.

So anyway last week I asked Andrew Ross to do some printing for me. He made me a couple of POP prints. It's a very old technology, in fact its an update of the collodion printing process. It's only suitable for contact printing, and uses sunlight/UV light instead of an enlarger light. I'm by no means an expert, but Andrew is getting there.

The purpose of asking Andrew Ross to do some printing for me was to see if I may be able to use the process to produce these works in the future.

So for the benefit of your photographic education below we have four images in two pairs - one on POP printed under UV and toned (which is, apparently, integral to the POP process), one on multigrade variable contrast silver gelatin paper printed using a standard enlarger and untoned.

You should note that the POP print above is flatter than the other print. This is largely due to the fact that POP printing doesn't allow much scope for adjusting contrast, therefore your negative needs to be developed with that in mind.

Below you will notice that there is sky/cloud detail in the POP print which is severely lacking in the other. I wasn't prepared to cut a mask and burn in the sky on this wasting tens of sheets of paper hoping to line up the mask exactly to stop over-exposure on the building etc.
Thanks Andrew. Definitely a successful experiment. Look out for some Andy Palmer POP originals in the near future. Or some time before I shuffle off. Hopefully.