pjfranzini (away)'s photostream

This diptych, meant to be printed at 10 x 5 inches, is composed of two macro photos. The piece on the left is rather extreme macro, using a Raynox add-on closeup lens; what’s being photographed is a roughly 2 x 3 mm section of… surprise, surprise, a copper plate. The magnifications involved here are much higher than when I scan a plate. I typically scan at 1200dpi, occasionally as high as 2400dpi. To get the equivalent of this image, I would have had to have a scanner capable of scanning at around 12Kdpi. Moreover, the camera gives a completely different “feel”, more dimensional, since I have more control over the angle of the lighting.

The plate here has not undergone any marked chemical work, but instead has been scribbled on with a Pilot V5-type rollerball pen, sometimes with ink, sometimes not. There’s a lot of texture here, which can be seen better by viewing this image large, or even better by clicking here (a closeup image hosted on my website, with a bit less image compression than Flickr uses).

Composition repurposed from my 2004 digital print, Fractal State I.

Digital Print, 28 x 35 cm

This image uses a couple of my snow and ice texture photos combined and manipulated in Adobe Photoshop to make the background.

The "cells" I drew by hand (ink on paper); then I scanned them in, and used a little program I wrote in Processing to automatize the generation of random cell distributions, with parameters I can set to control the process (allowed range and density of cells, a denser distribution or larger cells in some direction, for example), and using Perlin noise for more "interesting" distributions. I outputted hundreds of files, then chose the one I liked best, and did final editing by hand in Photoshop.

This was one of my first finished pieces using not just computer programs but computer programming to facilitate its conception, a method I plan to use more in the future. The process of fortuitous events alternating with periods of reflection and selection is always one of my central themes.

A closeup of this image can be seen here: www.pfranzini.com/2008/prints/sangreAzulC.php

A new composition drawn from a 3x3 inch section of one of my latest copper plates.

The process that creates these colors and textures is a combination of various things I have done to the plate (which may include etching, engraving with hand tools or Dremel, and oxidation and corrosion of the plate aided by reagents such as salt, vinegar and ammonia), and scanning the plate with levels and curves and so on tweaked to give a highly enriched version of the plate.

While every color, texture and line here has in a sense been placed by me, the guiding principle is serendipity. I do a lot of processes to plates (sometimes over many years, returning to a plate after setting it aside for years) that involve chance, then "mine" the plates searching for gems.

Wow, my first comment before I've written the description.

Today's made-for-Flickr composition was repurposed from my 2004 digital print, Fractal State IV. It corresponds to about a one foot-by-one foot section of the original 2x3 foot print. This image also originated from a scan of a copper plate (etched and then corroded with household reagents, then scanned in a color-enriching, many times enlarging, fashion).