seascape with lighthouse

This has a very impressionist feel to it. I've usually only seen these done to portraits and still-lifes. Did you use a ballpoint pen to smear the image? I'm not a huge fan of the wider, softer smears, they seem to work against the smaller, tighter scribbles. I really like the layers of color here - and that texture - one doesn't usually get that in a straight photo.
-matt

matt

i have a little "kit" of emulsion moving tools that consists of a motely collection of toothpicks, discarded keys, dried up ball point pen inserts, flossing picks, etc. it's really not much of a science. you just need to avoid things that are too sharp, otherwise you can damage the surface of the print.

i've always loved this technique, but now, in the age of desktop scanners, there are even more possibilities with the process. the ability to enlarge the image with fanastic detail is wonderful, although i always keep the images on the smallish side to preserve the intimacy of the polaroid print itself. plus, this is one of the few cases were over sharpening is fun to play with.

as an aside, walker evans, an icon of 20th century photography, in the last year before his death worked exclusively with an sx70 camera creating over 2,650 images. he did not manipulate the images, but time zero film in and of itself produces a distinctly "unreal" look.

a new book, "walker evans ~ polaroids" has recently been published. the work, reproduced actual size, is an incredible testament to what vision, together with what he called "a toy", can create.

be forwarned though, he advised that no one under 60 should touch a polaroid. he was four months shy of his seventieth birthday at the time.

time zero film is readily available and sx70s can be had on ebay.

Yes, a very impressionistic feel. I could gaze at this image for a long time looking at all of the touches. I like both the big and small movements.

I like this a lot, to me it has a lot of appeal. Like Ken said too, the different movements are really nice. The only thing that would make it better for me personally, not to argue with your choices or anything, is for the lighthouse to be a bit larger. I know it's a lighthouse because it says so in the title of your post, but at least at web size, I wouldn't know that otherwise. Perhaps this is not the case in a larger version.

Your produced some fantastic results with this technique. I would be interested in seeing more.

Interesting inpressionistic type piece.

What Heather said, where's the friggin lighthouse?