Hybrid photobased Prints

So what will work as a Hybrid print? It’s difficult to answer this directly and you will need time experimenting and a lot of patience to gain some personal insight into the application of visual strategies and technical process is that are successful in this work, but here are some general principles:

• Working on the principle that figure ground relationships produce visually stimulating and dynamic images – use one image and process to lay down a ground then use the other to create the figure with in or on top of this.

• Images with undefined blurred edges allow some degree of tolerance in registration weary as images with hard edges require more critical registration.

• Bland visual spaces in images can act as areas of linkage or gaps. Matrix or process to weave into the other – look at the two as a series of threads that you stitch together

• Visual abstraction with areas and to focus allows space and tolerance - total realism requires patience and accurate registration.

• Rather than be a control freak - having an absolute fixed idea of what the image will look like –Relax! -Be open to mistakes, assess what they offer and allow idiosyncrasies of the process to intervene.

• Work with small files sizes like a sketch in Photoshop - Use layers as to gain a quick idea of how images might combine. Complete a number of small sketches perhaps ten or a dozen and then select the one with most potential. Until you gain some experience and insight, it is a trap to pour hours of work and sweat into an image and then find it is just does not work. It’s much wiser to carry out some quick sketches in photoshop – use layers to get an idea of how the two images will combine - do some quick prints at a smaller scale and assess the results. You will soon know if the image has potential and you should continue. Then - if you decide to develop the image through to a final print use photoshop in a more exacting manner to produce the various matrix for the print. You can use photoshop to experiment with a simulation of the emulsion coating.

It can not be stressed enough that creating combination prints takes a great deal of time and needs to be approached in a methodical manner. Document exactly what you are doing - particular chemical processes -that way you can avoid repeating silly mistakes and you will develop a personal resource of information that will allow you to move forward.

Want to learn more? - do a workshop or one on one with Lloyd Godman