Lumen print how to#
Lumen print plus#

Make sure the masking tape does not cover any of the paper.Ĭarry everything outside and place it in the sun. You may want to use some masking tape to hold the glass in place. Under the safelight, or in total darkness, remove a sheet of the paper and place it, emulsion side up (smooth side up), on your backing board.Īrrange your cutting/leaf/flower on the paper.Ĭover everything with the glass. Always protect your unused paper from exposure to any light other than the safelight. Your photographic paper will be inside a light-proof, black envelope in a cardboard box. Look for cuttings that will lay fairly flat and are small enough to fit onto the paper. You are not limited to making prints from plant cuttings but, plant cuttings, leaves, and flowers are a good place to start. Once you have the items needed it's time to start having fun. Masking tape, bulldog style clips or clothes pegs, tongs, rubber gloves, running water, somewhere to hang your prints to dry. One is for the fixer, the other is for washing the print. Any cheap tray that will hold 1l of solution will do though. Plastic trays specifically for photographic paper are the best to use as they have ridges on the bottom to make removing paper easier. The trays need to be large enough to contain your paper laid flat.

Lumen print plus#

Follow the directions on the fixer bottle, it's usually 200ml of fixer plus 800ml of water or thereabouts. This is just for mixing the fixer solution. Once your paper is treated with fixer it will no longer be sensitive to light, without it your image will disappear. It doesn't matter which brand or type you buy, they all do the same thing - make your image permanent. The place where you buy your paper will probably also sell fixer. Make sure the set you buy is at least one size larger than the paper you will use. Use the glass and backing board and toss the frame. Pick up a couple of photo/certificate frames from one of those cheap variety stores (the Reject Shop for example). The important bit is to protect your unused paper from any light.

You could skip the safelight and carefully take a sheet of paper from the packaging under a heavy cloth or something. You really only need the safelight when taking a sheet of paper from its packaging - to prevent the rest of the paper from being exposed. You can buy an LED safelight globe and plug it into a standard light fitting or lamp. Personally, I like warm toned fibre based paper but it's not as easy to work with as resin coated (RC) paper.

Buy paper in small quantities and experiment. There are many different types of paper available and they will all produce different results. I suggest starting with 8' x 10' paper, it's a common size and not too expensive. Any exposure to light (other than a safelight) will ruin the paper.

You can even use expired paper and get good results, as long as the paper has never been exposed to light. A quick Google search will help you find a number of stores that sell photographic supplies, including paper. Note: this is not the kind of paper used for inkjet printing. Today, we can use this same technique to produce lumen prints with readily available products. He called his discovery a photogenic drawing. He found that the paper darkened except for the areas covered by the plant cutting, rendering an accurate tracing of the plant on to the paper. He placed plant cuttings between a pane of glass and a sheet of the light sensitive paper and set it down in direct sunlight. The technique dates back to 1834 when William Henry Fox Talbot, an English scientist and inventor, discovered that writing paper, coated with salt and treated with a silver nitrate solution, would darken when exposed to sunlight.

Lumen print how to#

How to Make a Lumen Print No camera requiredĮssentially, a lumen print is an image produced on photographic paper using the sun as a light source.