Image "color" in Hand Coated Silver Images

As I have brought up too many times to count, there are numerous variables involved with influencing the outcome of any hand coated silver print. There are cross-variables, between mediums, such as between a salted paper print (I refer to them as salted silver prints) and a Kallitype, or Van Dyke Brown. All three of these mediums are silver prints, each utilizing a different 'binder'. The binder is the iron component of the chemical makeup that when combined with a silver solution become sensitive to UV light, thereby ultimately reducing the silver halide solution into the resultant metallic silver form on the printing paper. The black part of the image is reflecting pure metallic silver.

A quick overview of those three mediums shows each are very similar. The Van Dyke Brown uses Ferric Ammonium Citrate as its iron binder. (* Ferric Ammonium Citrate is the developing ingredient for platinum/palladium printing) The Kallitype used Ferric Ammonium Oxalate as the  iron binder. The Salted Silver print used sodium chloride (table salt) as the binding agent. There are visual similarities to these three image types. They tend to be of the 'brown' stripe, although by varying the developing agent in the Kallitype, the print image can vary from purplish to reddish of the Sepia variety, to brown as well as black. The more technical aspect of these differences is not something I will get into here. That is laid out in more detail on my blog {G.M. Handgis Photography/blogspot)

The examples of hand coated silver prints I have been posting are all salted silver prints. To be more specific, the negatives have a density range of Log E 1.2 (with exceptions like the Sailboat), printed on Canson White paper, using two generous layers of saturated silver solution (13%), printed in north light at approximately 15-20 lumens, then fixed. They have not been toned. At this time, all prints I make now will be toned, using either gold toner or platinum/palladium, and then most likely mostly the palladium variety. Those two metals have skyrocketed in price with the continued speculation in precious metals market. Just so you know, both platinum and palladium salts have increased 30% since I began blogging on photography a few months ago.

Salted Silver Print ~ "Oregon Reservoir"
1987 ~ 5x7 Unique (private collection)
Oregon