Marylin,
There are a few pictures of the making of
the first ginant pinhole project back in 2002 at the following URL
(Note that this was my first experience with giant pinhole paper
negatives. I have since improved considerably my technique to get
much more balanced prints with a great deal of intermediate greys and a lot less
vignetting than shown here. I have pretty well given up on trying to get a
decent positive from the giant paper negative through contact printing.
But if someone asked for a positive with a sufficiently attractive proposal, I
would of course go ahead and make one...).
One picture on the web page referred above
shows the giant 5x10 feet processing trays we used at the
time. These were handmade from construction timber and heavy-gauge
plastic. They required 100 liters of chemical...! I've
since moved to a much simpler process where the paper is rolled and unrolled in
a "wall-tapestry" sort of tray requiring much less chemistry. This time
around, I hope to access a darkroom that specialises in very large format
processing and where I would not have to worry about the processing. This
would make my life easier.
The thing to be particularly careful is not to crease the paper,
since a crease will kill the print as far as gallery or museum
acquisition. When wet, fiber paper becomes as soft and floppy as a ragdoll
and that makes the whole processing process very challenging. Drying is
also very challenging. If I can access a large studio, I will try to
suspend the print from the ceiling for drying. This is the
best way. But drying on a screen is also good. In all
instances it is hard to find a place where you can hang-dry a large
number of giant prints...
Guy
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