Analogue Notes

Analogue Notes is my 2020 community art project.  It’s designed to encourage handwritten correspondence via a handmade work of art.

The General Idea

Draw a picture or create a hand-lettered piece.  I will turn it into a cyanotype postcard, and return it to you with a stamp ready to mail. You add a handwritten note to someone special along with their address and you (or I) can drop it in the mail .

It’s also a collaboration.  Together we will celebrate the long tradition of handwritten  correspondence send through the mail on a piece of art.

How to Participate

To participate, email (ironically) a scanned or photographed line drawing that you make to pam@analoguedragon.com.

The line drawing should be made on white paper (copy paper would work perfect) using a black marker.  Markers will produce smooth, graphic lines which will translate better as a cyanotype print.

Within 10 days, I will print the drawing as a cyanotype and have it ready for pick-up at the my Hillsdale County Farmers Market stall.

The price for each postcard is $3 and includes a postage stamp already adhered to the card.

A Community Exhibition of Analogue Notes

This project will conclude with a fall public exhibition of the Analogue Notes produced between July 1st and August 31st.  The exhibition location will be announced at a later date.

New 20×24″ Contact Printing Frame

With the help of my Christopher, my dad and my uncle Mark I now have a contact printing frame for making up to 16×20″ prints! 🙂 The largest prints I have been able to make up to this point is 9×12″.

There’s a little more work to be done, but I’m about to take it for a whirl anyway.

Cyanotype Snow Crystal Adventure!

Winter is a tough season for a warm weather loving portrait photographer.

Usually, it is when I plan for the next summer’s photographic and horticultural projects, and when I tackle at least one transformative house project.

These things will still happen, but at the moment I am fully immersed in learning about snow crystals and how the Victorian obsession with studying their structure intersected with early photographic processes decades before the first camera based micrographic image of a snow crystal was made.

This adventure started when I stumbled upon an online exhibition, written and curated by Caroline Marten, on the University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum website that features, in part, examples of 19th century salted paper prints of hand drawn snow crystal illustrations by James and Cecilia Glaisher.

They are beautiful and I knew immediately that I would wanted to try to replicate the Glaisher’s process.  It’s a new project, so I am still searching for a way to make it my own.  But in the meantime, here is my first technical test using a reproduction of a Glaisher illustration included in the online exhibition.

Stereoscopic Photography

This winter’s project is to try to convert this vintage glass plate camera into a stereoscopic camera for next summer’s street portrait project.

Below is my “template” for what is needed to make my camera stereoscopic.   Mostly, I need to add a septum/divider to to the bellows.    And I need to find two lenses that identical enough to make two photographs at the same time.  Easy, right?  Oh!  And I need to adapt the back to accept a 5×7 film holder instead of glass plates.

While I am working on piecing these things together I think I will learn to make single images with it. 🙂  Maybe even put the camera on a slider and make stereoscopic images that way.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Slide-Bar-RAIL-for-CHA-CHA-Stereoscopic-Single-Camera-3D-Calibrated-Tripod-Ready/381975930317?hash=item58ef8a25cd:g:oPUAAOSwTuJYrMJ5:sc:USPSFirstClass!49274!US!-1:rk:1:pf:0