Hasta La Gadget!

Laptopogram. An old-new name for a marriage of ancient and modern technology. It works like this: take a piece of photo-sensitive paper (if you can find a darkroom supply store that is still trading), press it to the screen of your computer and switch that screen on for an appropriate interval (probably less than ten seconds depending on brightness). Splosh the paper through developer, stop and fixer baths, turn on the lights (you did turn out the lights, right?) and you’re done.

This wonderful practice was named by nerd-tographer* Aditya Mandayam, who presses the paper to the screen of his IBM R51 Thinkpad and runs a (Linux) command-line script to blip the screen on and off.

All prints were developed on Ilford Ilfospeeed RC Deluxe 5 Glossy paper using Tetenal Neofin Blau with water as a stop bath and a fixer of unknown provenance.

Photo paper registers a negative of the image projected upon it: more light darkens the paper. Normally you would project a negative film frame down on to the photo-paper, but fortunately modern computers are adept at image processing and can invert a picture easily. You can also “dodge and burn” parts of the image before printing.

These photos are more like contact prints or photograms, but the results are something else entirely. This is probably helped by the Tetenal Neofin, which is a B&W film developer, not meant for paper. Perhaps by keeping the screen as dim as possible (to minimize light from the shadows) and by using a proper paper developer, the whites would stay a little whiter. Still, I’m pretty tempted to get back into the darkroom, although I’m almost certain the chemicals under the sink are out of date by now.

Laptopogram [Tumblr via Kottke]

*Another made up term, this time mine. Sorry.