Bloom

Experimental Photo Post-Processing / 2023

During my final semester at the Rhode Island School of Design, I enrolled in a Graphic Design workshop to complete my remaining elective studio credits for graduation. This four-week workshop, “PhotoGraphic,” led by Franz Werner, served as an introduction to the intersection of photography—particularly digital photography—and graphic design.

Although I already had a background in photography (including earning a high school fine arts diploma with a project focused on infrared film photography and darkroom techniques), this course temporarily reinvigorated my passion. Initially, I enrolled in the workshop intending it to be a light commitment, merely a means to wrap up my credits while focusing on my degree project. Yet, as the course unfolded, I unexpectedly found myself deeply immersed in a captivating exploration I hadn't anticipated

Bloom—a captivating optical lens effect—has always been a sought-after stylistic feature in various artistic disciplines. In video gaming, for instance, replicating bloom is a complex task due to the high rendering demands. This challenge piqued my interest, leading me to experiment with capturing images of reflective surfaces or intense light sources. I did this by setting my DSLR lens to its widest aperture and adjusting the manual focus as close as possible to the lens opening. The resultant images, inherently blurry and out-of-focus, were not difficult to capture. The real challenge, however, lay in isolating the bloom after the fact.

Bloom book

For the workshop's final, we were tasked with creating a “look book” from the photos we had taken during the class. Given it was my last chance to make a book while at school, I decided to focus on the whole book aspect instead of worrying too much about the usual graphic design and layout intricacies.

With light as the central theme of this project, I needed the book itself to exhibit a degree of translucence, allowing natural light to play upon the toner prints. Testing proved vellum to be the best option for this effect. The desire to have each spread showcase a full image—without any interference from prints on the reverse side—posed challenges too. Perfect binding wasn't an option due to sections of the prints would be lost in the fold of the spine. Likewise, using more than one page per signature could cause print overlays.

I purchased the last of the clear white vellum from Paperworks in Pawtucket for this book. I carefully folded them into individual signatures. To prevent the inherently delicate vellum from tearing during the folding and binding phase, I fortified each spine using Japanese art restoration tissue. This tape material was sturdy enough to hold the vellum intact, yet its finesse ensured it remained invisible when viewed against a backlight. I freestyle my own method of winding a sewing thread through each signature’s folds, giving it a sturdy yet airy and delicate look.

At the RISD Co-Works facility, I utilized a UV printer equipped with both CMYK and White inks. In an unconventional approach, I printed the images directly into the bound book. Placing the blank vellum book within the UV printer, open to one spread at a time, the printing head moved back and forth, depositing the abstract bloom patterns and gradients directly onto the open spreads. Even coloring the white sewing thread used to bind the signatures together.

This image was taken during the “PhotoGraphic” class that inspired this entire project. Our class, led by the professor Franz Werner, visited a local ballet studio to capture dancers in their practice sessions. This print shows the blue glow of a dancer's pants illuminated by the afternoon sun filtering through a window. The white, angular blur patterns in the image are out-of-focus reflections of that same window on the metal support poles in the studio.

This print is the extracted bloom from an image of the reflection of the sun in the shiny blue roof top of a car I found on College Hill in Providence Rhode Island.

This print consists of several vertical lines, these were formed by the ridges along the facade of the new Brown’s Performing Arts Center building lit from below at night.

This print is one of my favorites. Take a second to try and guess what it is… It’s a stop sign!

This print is of a traffic cone.I wish I could unsee these. Since now they are so self evident as to what they are, I wonder how long it would take me to recognize them with fresh eyes.

This print is slightly different, it is from another version of my bloom separation system. Where the original version would separate the bloom from the rest of the image based on their RGB values. This version would separate based off of their Hue Saturation and Vibrance. With this added controllability you can easily target any portion of the image to be extracted. This image in particular was of a blue city bike left in front of the Brown gym.

This print was produced from an image of a little sprouting plant in the sidewalk somewhere in the College Hills of Providence Rhode Island.

This print was produced from an image of a crosswalk with a neon yellow warning sign in the middle of it.

Around the Brown University campus there are countless public safety lamp posts with phones that will call the Brown police and light up if you ever need security. This print is of the lens of one of those blue lights glowing in the sunlight illuminating it.

This print is of the rear brake light of a white car, but more interesting is the crinkle and crumple of the butcher paper caused by the custom cut size I fed through the printer getting caught on some internal mechanism.

This is a fun print! Due to the white toner being used in these prints I had to feed each print with multiple colors through the printer more than once. Once for the colors, and once again for the white. This print made it through the color pass intact, but on its second run through for the white pass it got caught in the internal mechanics of the printer. The corner is folded over itself, the white toner printed right over the fold and off the edge of the butcher paper. The white, falling in and out of line with the color print. Creases and crinkles run up and down the print and the bottom left edge has been ripped and torn up as it exited the printer. The original image was of the yellow rear light on a bluish silver car spotted somewhere on College Hill in Providence Rhode Island.

This print is of the rear brake light of a white car. On its side like this, it looks like a tulip or a bouquet of flowers, something floral while saturated and fiery.