Essence // September Forest Floor
UPDATE: You can now find my favorite in this series in the Print Shop has Digital Downloads
One of my earliest childhood memories is walking through my parents yard, collecting colorful leaves during Autumn, lying them in a long row next to our woodstove to dry, and then keeping them in a shoebox. I just loved the colors so much.
One evening at the beginning of September, I was walking down my lane and noticed the early stages of fall starting to litter my gravel road. I started collecting leaves, mushrooms, moss, and other plants that spoke to me until I had a large handful and it was hard to carry.
My collection of treasures to work with
I decided to repeat some of my process I did for the Rose of Sharon + Passionflower session. I went into a darkroom, pulled the film from it’s canister, and laid all of my treasures along the emulsion of the strip, rolled it back onto it’s self and secured it with a rubber band. I placed it in a large bowl to soak up the beautiful September golden light that I love so much! But then…. it rained. A LOT. So after it got quite a bit of rain, I took it out of the bowl and placed the bundle in the garden where I hoped it would get more morning light. BUT. It rained. AGAIN. So I brought the bundle inside to dry.
Once I unrolled the film, I was disappointed again to find a lot of the emulsion came off (too much water again and perhaps the expired film was part of the culprit) and it didn’t look like I got much exposed on the film. So I cut the film into strips again, secured them to a sturdy paper, laid more leaves on the strips and exposed it all day in a sunny area.
Similar to the lumen and cyanotype process, I laid my treasures on the emulsion side of the film strip to expose in the bright sun.
I once again developed using the Flying Embers Hard Kombucha and was still disappointed at first glance. The film strip was so dark and didn’t appear to have much on it. It took me a few days to get around to scanning the negatives. I just didn’t think I had anything good. BUT once I scanned and turned them into positives I was very pleased with the results. Even pleased with some of the frames that had missing emulsion. I’m VERY happy with the frames you can see the leaf imprints on.
I’ve ordered proofs from my lab already to be sure they can capture the depth and texture of this series. If all goes well, I hope to release my favorites soon to the Print Shop