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You are here: Home / Archives for Photography

Sunlight prints give photography a new-old look

August 16, 2018 By Eric Douglas

Original Image. Seven Gill Shark in the Oregon Coast Aquarium. (Yes, I was diving in the aquarium. )

One of the greatest losses with digital photography is that we never print our pictures. We share them on social media and on our phones, but we never see them hanging on the wall.

Early in my career in scuba diving, I was fortunate to see a photo show by Ernie Brooks. It was simply black and white photos of air bells underwater. I was mesmerized.

With those two things in mind, I set out to turn my own underwater photography on its ear. I experimented with converting my photos to black and white. I frequently dive in lakes so shifting to black and white didn’t lose much.

While I liked the effect, I thought I could do more.

Enter the sunlight print, also known as cyanotype. Cyanotype printing is an original photo printing technique, first used around 1842. Cyanotypes are made by mixing two chemicals (ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide) and treating paper, cloth or canvas, making it sensitive to ultraviolet light. The sun turns the chemical blue while whatever is shaded stays white.

One of the earliest uses for cyanotype was for naturalists to capture images of plants. The same process is used to create “blue prints” of maps and drawings.

 

I first learned how to make cyanotypes in a class at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. While there I made contact prints and later experimented with prints of things, like plants, glasses and crystals. Anything that would bend the light.

Converted to a black and white negative.

To make contact prints, you take a digital image (either a scan or a digital photo) and then reverse it in Photoshop. Printed out on a clear paper, it become a full-size negative.

In college, I had learned about black and white photography and printing my own images so this was nothing new. The cool part about cyanotypes that instead of hiding away in a darkroom to make images, you do it in the sun.

Here are some examples of the work.

  

How To

  1. Find images that are sharp and clear, with a simple subject and a clean background.
  2. Using photo editing software create black and white versions of your photographs.
    1. Take a critical look at these images. Edit out any that don’t stand up to the loss of color.
  3. Reverse the image, turning it into a “negative”.
  4. Print the negative image on a piece of acetate photo paper made for use with inkjet printers.
    1. This is a contact print so print it out the size you expect from the final cyanotype.
  5. Mix the chemicals in a glass container, but just a little at a time. Literally, a capful or two of each chemical is enough.
  6. Treated paper, before exposure.

    Brush the mixture on a piece of art paper. (You can use a lot of different papers and fabrics.) I prepare 10 to 20 papers at a time.

    1. Use a foam brush for an even coat. Try using a bristle brush and leaving streaks in the coating for a unique look.
    2. Use a bathroom with no windows. Normal room lights are okay, but avoid exposure to UV light.
    3. Wrap the dry papers in a black plastic garbage bag to keep them from becoming exposed to the sun.
  7. Place a negative on top of the cyanotype paper and set it in the sun.
    1. Exposure takes five to 10 minutes, depending on the sun.
    2. Use an old picture frame, or a darkroom contact printer, to compress the negative to the paper for the sharpest print.
    3. If it is too light, repeat the process, but increase the time in the sun.
  8. Stop the exposure by soaking the print in fresh, running water. No “fixer” is necessary.
  9. Let the print dry and enjoy.
  10. Noon sun will give the sharpest image, but other times of day when the sun changes angles will change how your prints look.

Where to find the materials

Cyanotype Chemical kits are available through Photographers Formulary for $24.95. The description says it produces 25 to 50 prints, but my experience has been it produces many more prints than that.

For the acetate paper, I use Pictorico Premium OHP Transparency Film available through B and H photo online or your local specialty photo store. It is designed for use with Inkjet printers.

For the prints, I use a variety of art papers, available through your local arts and crafts store. I’ve recently been using a white, acid-free card stock for scrapbooking. Different papers give different textures to the image.

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Filed Under: Diving, Photography

Marshall divers studying native mussels in Ohio River

October 10, 2017 By Eric Douglas

Originally published in the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail on September 29, 2017.

 

Imagine jumping into the Ohio River, the cool end-of-summer water covering your head, and then descending to the bottom, staying there and searching in the dark through the muck, sand, rocks and submerged trees for freshwater mussels for an hour.

Graduate student Mitchell Kriege is finishing a research project in the Marshall University environmental sciences program. He and a team of researchers, led by Associate Professor Tom Jones, have been diving in the river and then completing surveys of the freshwater mussels they find on the river bottom.

On a recent September Saturday morning, the group met at the university and drove the boat to a remote ramp on the Ohio. It’s difficult to call what the team does diving. They are underwater for an hour breathing compressed air, but they don’t wear fins, and they don’t swim. They crawl along on the bottom, fanning away silt and mud, feeling for mussels.

They find mussels with common names, like black sandshell, three-horn wartyback, pimpleback, washboard, three-ridge, deertoe and sheepnose (which is listed as an endangered species on the federal register.) Zebra mussels, an invasive species they don’t study but that are often attached to the mussels they are looking for, have a razor-sharp edge that causes fine cuts on their hands.

According to Kriege, the eastern United States is the hot spot for mussel diversity in the world.

“We are the equivalent of the Amazon rainforest, but for mussels. It is important to study them because they are so heavily imperiled,” he said.

“This project will be the first time we have a statistically defendable estimate of the mussels in the Greenup Pool, or anywhere in the Ohio River to my knowledge,” Jones said. “More species of mussels are federally listed than any other taxonomic group by percentage. Some authors cite almost 70 percent of mussel species have some federal protection due to rarity.”

The research project includes 20 randomly chosen locations on the river. At each location, the team lays out 100-meter-long weighted lines from the bank toward the middle of the river. A diver then enters the water and collects every mussel to be found in a 1-meter-wide swath along that line, placing them in mesh bags.

These swaths are called transects. Every 10 meters, the diver clips off the bag and begins a new one. When finished with the dive, the diver has surveyed a 100 square meters of river bottom.

At each location, they make six transects, each one 100 meters downriver from the previous one. For his master’s degree thesis, Kriege will produce maps showing the locations and dispersal of the various types of mussels in the river.

Jones explained freshwater mussels filter bacteria, fungi, protozoan and algae from the water column.

“In essence, they clean our drinking water for us. They also alter their substrates by movement and provide food to other species, both by being eaten and by producing pseudo-feces that bugs and fishes consume,” he said.

Healthy mussels on the river bottom aren’t just a nice thing to have. They benefit everyone.

“Each mussel filters anywhere from 5 to 20 gallons of water per day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If one mussel filters 10 gallons of water a day, that’s 3,650 gallons a year. When you get to talking about populations in the millions, you begin to realize how much money mussels are saving the taxpayers,” Kriege said. “Mussels not only clean the water we drink, they act as food for a wide array of organisms — muskrats, fish, etc., and their dead shells act as homes for many macroinvertebrates, fish and aquatic eggs.”

After each dive, the crew brings the 100-meter line to the surface with the mesh bags attached. They carefully measure and identify each mussel and record its statistics, before returning it to the river, where it can continue growing.

Before they are returned to the river, though, the zebra mussels are pulled loose. Zebra mussels attach themselves to just about anything underwater, including other larger mussels, and can kill them in the process. Removing the zebra mussels gives the native mussels a better chance at survival. Kriege explained that they do this for the mussels caught in the survey since they were dislodged from the bottom in the first place.

“This project has opened up my mind to the incredible number of mussels present in the Ohio River. There are literally hundreds of millions of individuals in our pool with 25-plus species. However, it has also opened my eyes to the sad truth of the incredible habitats and wide array of species we lost when the river was dammed and heavily polluted. About half of the sites we surveyed were heavily impacted by humans and nearly devoid of mussels. Historically their numbers would have easily been in the billions in just a short section or river.”

Eric Douglas, of Pinch, is the author of “Return to Cayman,” “Heart of the Maya,” “Cayman Cowboys,” “River Town” and other novels. He is also a columnist for Scuba Diving Magazine and a former Charleston Newspapers Metro staff writer. For more information, visit www.booksbyeric.com or contact him at Eric@www.booksbyeric.com.

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Filed Under: Adventure, Diving, Photography, Travel

Locations from the novella ‘Oil and Water’

August 15, 2016 By Eric Douglas

oil and water 6 lowAll of the Mike Scott novels and novella are set in real locations, places you can find on a map. With one exception, they are also places I have visited and spent time exploring. (A section of Wreck of the Huron takes place in Cuba on the Isle of Pines and I haven’t been there. Yet.)

Each of the following photos represents a scene in the latest Mike Scott novella Oil and Water. It is set on the beautiful western Caribbean island of Curacao. Read the story and then check out the photos to imagine yourself there!

DSC_0001
Page 9

 

IMG_0774
Photo of me diving in Curacao, by Lynn Bean. Page 17
DSC_0083
Page 58
DSC_0079
Page 58
DSC_1021 (2)
Page 72
DSC_0116
Page 72
DSC_0063
Page 80
DSC_0093
Page 85
DSC_1039
Page 94

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Filed Under: Adventure, Books, Diving, New Releases, Photography, Travel

Fiction becomes reality on Grand Cayman

October 5, 2015 By Eric Douglas

Ten years ago, my first novel (Cayman Cowboys) revolved around the conflict that happens when development squares off against the environment. In that case, a developer was destroying coral reefs in search of treasure while building a cruise ship dock. There were protests, corrupt politicians and good guys trying to save the reef. At the time, I honestly thought it was a little farfetched because the reef in Grand Cayman is a main draw for visitors. The idea that anyone would allow a developer to come in and haplessly destroy coral reefs that have earned the island the distinction of being one of the top diving destinations in the world was a bit out there. I thought.

Sea turtle on a reef on Grand CaymanFlash forward 10 years and the government of the Cayman Islands is planning to build a new pier that will allow cruise ships to dock in the harbor and not have to rely on shuttle boats, called tenders, to get the tourists back and forth the dock. The problem is, to build the dock, the government is going to have to destroy acres of viable coral reef and a historic wreck dive site that is in the middle of the approach to the harbor. They have discussed the idea of moving the reefs, but that’s just about the most absurd thing anyone without a financial stake in getting the dock built has ever heard. Those who have a financial stake in the dock think it makes perfect sense.

Spotted moray on Grand CaymanThe short version is they would have to cut loose and lift thousands of tons of rock and then relocate it to a new area. It’s all underwater, of course, and you just can’t blast it loose and then scoop it up. It would have to be cut loose from below the sand and carefully lifted and moved. On top of that, wherever you would move it to would have to have similar conditions of currents, depth and sunlight to allow the coral reef to continue living.

In short, it’s impossible. Read this opinion piece on the subject.

As an additional layer of absurd, beyond the reef that will be destroyed by the construction of the dock, many additional acres will be destroyed by the silt from the construction and dredging. That will devastate many existing hotels just outside the harbor by destroying their house reefs and the dive sites they frequent.

Arrow crab on Grand CaymanNone of this makes any sense. Unless you consider that the cruise ship lines want the dock. And they spend a lot of money on the island. It all comes back to short-sighted decisions in the interest of money.

The above video is just a simple collage of eight different dive sites in the area near the harbor. All of it will be destroyed or seriously degraded by the actual construction and the dredging. The conditions weren’t perfect the week I shot the video. As a matter of fact it rained every day so the visibility was a little degraded. A couple days, it was raining while I was in the water. Still, it shows the amazing diversity of undersea life on Grand Cayman. And it shows what we all stand to lose all in search of money. In the long run, tourism will suffer.

IMG_6005~2I think I’ll try to get back to Cayman one more time before they move forward with this disaster. Because once construction begins, the island will be permanently off my destination list..

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Filed Under: Adventure, Books, Diving, Documentary, Photography, Travel

Underwater debris not “out of mind”

September 17, 2015 By Eric Douglas

fishing line
Those straight lines are actually fishing lines that are now encrusted in the reef.

“Out of sight, out of mind.” This cliché is true for a lot of things. Something might be vitally important to us, but the moment we set it down, and walk away, we forget where we left it. Like that cup of coffee this morning. Or your car keys.

Just because something is out of your mind, doesn’t mean it’s not there anymore or is no longer a problem. For years, our oceans have been a dumping ground for the things we don’t want to see any more.

The problem is that junk that we’ve thrown into the ocean just stays there. Or it floats. And it kills birds or turtles, porpoises and whales who get tangled in it.

When I dive, I often pick up trash that hasn’t been down too long. When I was diving in Grand Cayman recently, I spotted an empty tuna can and tucked into my BCD to bring it to the surface, for example. bottleI know lots of divers who do that. On the other hand, if fishing line is entangled in a reef, you’ll do more damage by pulling it lose than leaving it in place. A can or a bottle that has been on the bottom for a while might have something living in it. In the local lake where I learned to dive, and many divers explore every day in the summer, I often see beer cans, plastic cups and other debris on the bottom.pop can

Today, most of us who grew up with the crying native American standing beside the road from the Keep America Beautiful commercial get angry when we see litter by the side of the road where some inconsiderate, selfish slob has thrown it from their car. We need to have that same reaction when we see trash in the ocean. National Geographic reported earlier this year that eight million tons of plastic trash is dumped into the ocean every year.

You might have heard of the floating garbage dump in the North Pacific, but did you know there are actually five floating gyres of plastic and trash?

What you can do

1) Look for alternative materials or avoid excessive packaging when deciding on purchases. Use paper bags, milk and juice in cardboard, and cloth diapers. Insist on paper bags and glass bottles.

2) Recycle. Many communities currently offer pick-up recycling programs for #1 and #2 plastics. Other forms of plastic may be accepted by a local recycling business. If your community doesn’t have a recycling program, contact your city or town hall to request one.

3) Educate others about the problem of marine debris, enhancing “voluntary compliance through awareness.”

4) Get involved. Locate or start a cleanup in your area.

From the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

PADI’s Project Aware is organizing the Beneath the Waves drive for divers to share their photos of underwater debris on Instagram and Twitter  with the hashtag #BeneathTheWaves leading up to the Our Ocean 2015 conference on October 5 and 6.

Divers, it’s time to do more than picking up a piece of trash or two and bringing it to the surface. Show the world what you see. Maybe then, it won’t be out of sight any longer.

 .

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Filed Under: Diving, Photography

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