Lumen Print: California Poppies with Pasture Grass.

The lumen prints from Wildflowers Series use 30-year-old Artista Classic 16x20 fiber-based paper placed between two sheets of plexiglass with full sun exposures of approximately 2-4 hours. The wildflower petals pressed onto the surface coupled with the moisture from the organic materials produced the unexpectedly vibrant colors on the black and white silver gelatin paper.

Lumen prints rely upon the principle that any silver gelatin photographic paper if exposed to enough sunlight, will produce an image without a developer. Once fixed, the image is permanent. Lumen prints use conventional "developed-out" silver gelatin papers to create unpredictable results. With lumen prints, sunlight is used not only to expose the image but also to develop it. 

Lumen prints are ephemeral images; the colors will continue to fade before disappearing completely. Lumen prints can be fixed, however, the fixing process dramatically shifts the colors of the lumen print. In order to preserve the vibrant colors, each lumen print was scanned with an Epson V750 flatbed scanner. Each print required 6 individual 8.5 by 11.5-inch scans that were then merged and retouched to remove dust spots using Adobe Photoshop.