Experiments in Eco-Processing

Blog 2017 September

September 8, 2017

Blueberries were still at the farmers market this week. This is my process for prepping most plants for a developer.

Boil down the plant...

strain the solids from the liquid...

strain them really well!

Sometimes it is difficult to separate the seeds from the berries

Check your starting temperature, and then adjust as needed

Check pH level of your tea (optional)

Have all ingredients ready

Mix ingredients all together in the correct order

This recipe turns the blueberry tea green!

Check the pH again, it is fun to compare the pH readings.

--- September 30, 2017 ---

I have decided to create a work flow that will conserve resources as best as possible.

1. establish a developer recipe that provides good consistent results

2. incorporate the developer recipe into reversal process

3. work on the tint

Below are some of my results from my experiments using blueberries:

I based the first test on a colt's foot weed-ol recipe and began to play first, with temperatures and then, adjust the amounts of washing soda and vitamin C. I also noticed what I thought was "fogging" for the first time during the reversal and so decided to try using iodized salt to prevent this. Since conducting a few more tests I decided that the salt is not helping to reduce the fog and therefore have decided to omit it going forward.

Tinting with Blueberries

Below are some results tinting with blueberries on 16mm stock.

Not quite like I expected.

I let the film sit in the tint for four hours (a method I have used in the past) but the tint didn't take. I then let the film sit overnight, I woke up to find all the emulsion slid off the plastic. Some of the tint congealed with emulsion into globs on the film. The clear breaks in the photos are where the blobs broke. Perhaps they were air bubbles inside?