I did a photography lab in grade school where I smeared my face with vaseline, rolled it onto photography paper then "developed it." I would very much like to repeat this experiment. Has anyone heard of it? Can anyone tell my how this might work? It's a perfect vehicle for teaching principles of developemnt withour getting bogged down with other stuff. Thanks.

-- Alexis (chemgal@metacrawler.com), January 31, 2001

Answers

The vaseline stops the developer reaching parts of the paper, and so they stay white while the uncovered parts turn black in the developer.
These prints won't be permanent, since the vaseline stops any fixer (if used) from reaching the undeveloped parts too.
I don't think that this will really teach much about development, since it isn't really photography in the true sense of 'drawing with light'.

BTW, if you couldn't work out how it worked, how were you expecting to teach about it?

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 01, 2001.