printing photos on metal

The jewellery department organised a workshop in printing photos on metal. It's the same process as when you print photos on watercolour paper by painting emulsion on the paper



That is the first time I've developed a photo! It's fun, but complicated, although I'm sure it gets easier. The stripey effect is because we used the dooverwacky to determine the appropriate exposure time.

We had some trouble with putting the emulsion on the metal as a paintbrush leaves a nice effect on paper but it doesn't look any good on metal. So we tried dobbing it on but that left bubbles...



That was my one and only attempt (on silver) but you can see that the process has possibilities. When I get back I'm gonna hassle my photographer friends to help me get it right. Some of the students experimented further and on different materials and got patchy results but I think that was because all the chemicals were starting to turn bad (what do they say about people who blame their tools?) You can see some successful examples here, they're the two images that look like bottles in the middle row.

Anyway, the resulting surface appears pretty strong but I reckon it would work best on fine silver as I'm not sure whether the emulsion would protect the metal from tarnishing. The detail is pretty amazing too.



you can read the text printed on the window and see the individual branches on the tree! That image is 55 x 37 mm

.