Rayograms

Rayograms originated from the artist Man Ray in the 20th Century who photographed object straight onto light sensitive paper. Using an enlarger to create a negative print, however you can use any light source. But it's traditional to use a darkroom seen as the surrounding are more controlled and you have more control over the exposure of light and depth of field. The paper is held within a certain size of frame, the objects which you are using are placed ontop of the photographic paper. Once the composition is settled to the photographers satisfaction, you run the light for the amount of exposure you have set it for. Normally you would run a exposure test sheet to compare variable exposure and aperture settings. Then the procession of the paper into fixer solutions, washed in baths cleaning the surface and then dried. However in the workshops I used a machine that does it all for me.

Examples of Rayograms (images from Google)

So today I had a go and this method of photographing is very much a trial and error method and todays sessions ended in alot of errors but I took away some experience. Here are my results....

Cutting a shape of a duck out, and exposing it at different distances from the lens changed the clarity of the duck's outline.

This I used the same template, but put a piece of plastic sheet which I crumpled up to give the moving water effect.

Dried flowers.

This is the same method as above but tried to get a better print.

This would have been my best one but it got stuck in the machine. Fail.