Palladium Print #3 ~ New Portfolio

The new portfolio is beginning to shape up. Besides the 8x10 Gold toned Kallitype portfolio, this portfolio will be made up of 5x7 palladium prints. A number of the images are scenic images shot in Oregon, some along rivers, a couple at the coast. This would have been the project I would have loved to do thirty years ago when I began printing hand coated images.

The print tests with palladium is helping me to come to know what the image should look like during a visual inspecting during printing. As I wrote in the last post, the longer the density range, the more of the image is needed during printing. Using a negative that would print on a commercial silver gel paper, the "whisper" of an image might function. With a negative having a density range of log 1.8, that whisper will need to be about half the image showing up for the highlights to be printed in. As noted before, this is an intuitive learning curve, coming to understand your negatives, and their density range, as well as what that looks like during the printing phase.

This print was a seven and a half minute print. It could have used another two minutes, perhaps a skosh more. I'll know next print run. This run was close, leaving what I want to be zone 7, closer to zone 8, with little detail. Another two minutes in the sun will print that in nicely. I have negatives that are closer to 1.0 that would print better in north sky, indirect sunlight. Doing so increases slows printing time and increases contrast. The high intensity from direct sunlight affects the highlights more than the lower densities, thereby speeding up the printing and flattening the image more than if it were printed in north sky light.

This image was printed in full sun ~ 7 1/2 minutes
Developed; ammonium citrate

Palladium Print
"The Orchard" ~ 5x7 ~ 1/5
Eugene, Oregon