Altered Developing Process Portrait

The subject of these images is a portrait I made during our digital unit. It is half of my sister's face and half of my brother's face combined. I then developed them in a creative way in the dark room. I took both of the pictures that I combined by a window so I had natural light. The picture was already black and white so i inverted it using photoshop, I printed it on transparency paper, used an enlarger, photo paper and the chemicals in the dark room. I chose to put the developer where I did is because I wanted to highlight the major similarities. There are lines formed by the dripping developer, shapes formed by where I painted on the developer, texture from the paint brush, value in the grey and space where there is picture and pure whiteness. There is contrast between the pure white paper and the dark image. Movement from the dripping and unity because the faces are connected.

There is formal balance because there is one eye on each side of the picture and the final head is centered. The developer in certain spots gives it selective focus and also the face is in focus, but the background isn't. The drips serve as leading lines and connect the parts I highlighted. The eyes and mouth are framed by the developer. To start this process I made multiple test strips and developed as you normally would to find the time and filter. I chose to do 13 seconds at F8 with a 2.5 filter. I knew what I wanted to do for my developer and tried it twice.

I am a triplet and many people talk to me and my siblings about our similarities and differences. I originally created the image to show the similarities and then I used the creative developer placement to highlight the most similar features. What was a surprise for the first one was that the spray bottle didn't actually spray, it dripped. At first I didn't think it would turn out well, but once it developed I really liked it so I used the same drip and paint technique for my second one. I wish the picture wasn't so dark because it makes it hard to see the features. To change this I would have to redo my test strips and prints.