I passed by this sign at least twice a weekday, to-and-from work for 15 years, as I navigated the El Camino Real. Such a cool old sign.
I checked Google Maps Street View and it appears that as of November 2019, the sign was still standing, but the neon’s been removed. Too bad.
I’d heard that it was going to be taken down. If that happened, I hope someone save it.
I made a special trip at night to get a shot of the neon lit up.
This is a digital shot I made a coupla’ weeks back using my old Pentax 330GS.
The image was converted to black and white using Photoshop, where I also increased the contrast a bit, and inverted it to make a negative. I then opened the file in Illustrator, scaled it to around 8″ x 10″, then printed the image on acetate using our old Samsung laser printer.
It’s about an 8 minute exposure.
I made my first attempts at cyanotypes yesterday. Interesting process. Simple, really.
Reminded me of way back, during my mid-20s, when I worked as a draftsman for a civil engineering firm. I made a lot of blueprints in-office for field use. I’ll never forget the smell of ammonia.
Cyanotypes are pretty similar.
It takes mixing two chemicals – ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide – and brushing the mixture on paper in subdued light.
The chemicals are non-toxic, but probably not good to ingest or inhale. Wearing gloves is a good idea.
Perfect? No. Cool? Yup. Fun? Definitely!
I made a cyanotype of this geometric pattern I created in Adobe Illustrator, which I printed out on a sheet of clear acetate.
I placed the acetate over the coated paper and sandwiched ’em both between a thin sheet of plexiglass and a backing board, holding everything together with clamps.
I set it out in the direct sun exposing the paper for about 8 minutes. I unclamped the printing frame, removed the paper, rinsing it under running water. I then dipped the paper into a tray that had a bit of hydrogen peroxide mixed in with water to help darken up the blue.
You can place any number of different things on top of the paper. Besides the graphic, I also used a small branch from a plant. I plan on using photographic negatives from my medium and large format cameras in the near future.
Perfect? No. Cool? Yup. Fun? Definitely!
Russ Morris. Slightly Obsessed With Photography since 1964. 