Printing Day

Today turned out to be a printing day. Just decided it was the thing to do. As I continue to work with the Kallitype print, I'm experimenting with the two developers I use, as well as the density range of the negative. Each shapes the final image quite a bit, and I have a previsualized image I am attempting to arrive at. The tests today fell a bit short of my expectations, with the density experiments teaching me a lot, yet not on the first try, so the prints are a bit lacking from what I want them to be.

This image has been in the pipeline for printing for quite a while. It was down the list a bit. My choice for printing this image was using the cold black developer, and that shifted the overall image color to more neutral grays, although to my eye the image remains a bit warm. I also fell short of the print time by about 2-3 minutes to bring zone 7 in better, separate from the other values.  When I print this again, it will be with the increased print time, as well as developed in sodium citrate instead of sodium acetate. The citrate developer is the warmed toned version. The print will then be toned in palladium, instead of the gold toner I used for this print. I just don't like the image color. For my eye it looks like a split toned imaged, trying to be a neutral cool and a warm print at the same time. It is also not fully printed in.

I continue to use Revere Platinum paper for my printing; coated on the rough or open side.
Developer; Sodium Citrate ~ Clearing Bath; EDTA
Print time; 12 minutes

Gold toned Kallitype
"Weight of Spring" Unfinished
"Eugene, Oregon"

Shooting Time ~ Printing Time

I have been in Las Cruces visiting an old photographer friend who is soon to have open heart surgery. At our age it becomes a big deal. I will be returning once again, for a few days after he returns home from the hospital stay. This being the case, in tandem with the snap of autumn in the air, finally, begins a very good period for capturing the Arizona scene. The next day out will be with the Burke & James 5x7 view camera. I have been wanting to capture many of the buildings and homes of the old Barrios of Tucson. The Barrios snake around the downtown area and appear again in South Tucson, a city of its own, and the flavor there comes in many flavors, from various regions of Mexico. Known locally as Little Mexico. For my friend in Las Cruces, Mesilla, N.M. is their traditional Mexican Puebla known to have hosted Poncho Villa and his riders.

Flavor is everything for every photographer, looking for something that really grabs your attention, the brain calculating density ranges and lighting conditions, what to leave out what to leave in.... the very best of setting up a shot with a view camera. All of the view camera photographers I know also shoot digital images, but they all keep attached to their view cameras and use them. I'm likely preaching to the choir.

I will also be digitizing negatives differently now. Due to incompatibilities between the otherwise awesome Plustek scanner, and the fact that there is no useful software to actually make it work on Windows 10, I will be shooting the negs on a light box using my Canon 20D. An entirely new experience. Embarrassingly enough it took way too long for the light to go off when I was working to find said scanner, which, by the way, came all the way from Australia. I'll be back soon, either with new negs to show, or perhaps I'll have time in between jobs to get more prints made. Thanks for taking the time to visit the page.

New Kallitype

I suppose the idea behind posting finished images on one's blog is to show the finished 'perfect' print. As most photographers know, certain images are similar to a new food treat, looks pretty good until you print it, or eat it, respectively. I had been wanting to print some of the images I have of wild mustangs of Arizona that I photographed during a motorcycle trip I was on with an old friend. We were returning to Arizona from the Four Corners area, and were nearing Safford, Arizona when we came across these wild horses with markings one links to Pintos or Mustangs. Horse aficionados will know right off.

I won't likely be adding this to any portfolio. Perhaps I may hang it in my house as something new, but not likely a portfolio. Simply put, I just don't find it inspiring. It's almost like a color image, what you might see if you were standing there. There needs to be something in the image that makes the whole thing speak to you. Something. For me, Nada. I'm posting it to simply demonstrate that not all images make it to the show, as it were. I have several other shots from that short encounter. Perhaps there might be one that does grab me, in a good way.

Gold toned Kallitype
"Two Wild Ponies" ~ 8x10
Eastern Arizona

New Kallitype

Slowly I continue to add to the new portfolio, which, given time will evolve into two portfolios. Currently I am printing images captured in Arizona. I still have images from Oregon to print, some, not so much as recognizable scenic images, but more like the one I printed today. I have printed this image before, testing. The test part is behind me now, for the most part, and I have arrived at a standard curve function that fits very nicely into Kallitype and platinum/palladium printing. This is one of those new negatives for printing.

One of the realities of shooting in the Willamette Valley, and surrounding areas, was a persistent condition of "zone 7 skies", translated to being a totally gray sky, no indication of where the sun might be. A gray domed sky. Being that condition can last weeks, sometimes months, any young photographer with a format camera and film in hand isn't going to wait a long time. Photograph what you have available. This image represents probably a portfolio worth of images in the "Disuse" category, although they were some of my earliest photographs, and at this time, looking back, not my favorite images to spend time making into prints.

One of the great things about printing in silver, is the ability to mimic platinum, palladium and platinum/palladium images, by altering the developer and toner used. There are ways to mix that up to arrive at a desired print 'color' and tonal range leaving reciprocal blacks matching the more precious metals. This print was developed in sodium acetate to arrive at the overall cool black image, then toned it in gold to reinforce the blacks and keep the image a cool tone. Later, I will be posting another Kallitype image of "Paul & Jerry's" in Jerome, developed in sodium citrate, toned in palladium. That print mimics the same image I printed in palladium. This Disuse image mimics a platinum print, with exception to the steely cool middle tones of platinum, which aren't so easy to mimic. The overall look is similar, that is the point.

I am keeping the other variables of the prints the same, as in paper and other treatment issues. The print time for this image was 10 minutes, which, again, is for me the sweet spot for printing in silver. Enough time to reach dMax blacks, leaving crisp zone 7 whites. This print was also gold toned for ten minutes. This image was a late afternoon, last of the light shot.

Gold toned Kallitype
"Disuse #1" ~ 8x10 ~ 1/5
Eugene, Oregon

Second New Kallitype Print ~ Portfolio II

Yesterday was a good day for printing, coming away with two workable prints. This image was shot in one of the forest within the Willamette Valley, Oregon thirty years ago, using the same Century Graflex 6x9 as used for the children shots. Loved that camera. At the time, I was shooting a lot of scenic images of Oregon's forests and rivers. I came across this cabin with footbridge right in the middle of the forest. To be fair, hiking trails were nearby, as they usually are through those forest ranges. Hiking through an old growth Douglass Fur stand in a forest can be fairly impressive, especially when you are carrying camera equipment.

Because I was not what you might call a good note taker at the time I don't have a good way of knowing exactly where this scene was photographed, beyond it most likely being in said Willamette Valley. That period of time was a time of continuous experimentation with film developers and film settings. For whatever reason, back then, I highly valued lots of texture in the image, and to optimize that, I shifted the densities on the contrast index curve upwards, right up to the shoulder of the curve. That can be seen clearly in this image, being there are precious little shadow area in the image, when normally there would be lots and lots of shadowed areas. The intent was to hold as much of the textured area around zone 7 would reach that density range that looks like poured silver in the image. I didn't quite get that in this particular print, as it is slightly under printed. This print could use another three to four minutes print time, which would bring down what is now in the zone 8 region down to zone 7, and hence what is now zone 7 would be moved downward to zone 6. That would be the range I had intended in the final print. This was the test print for that final print. This image was also printed as a silver gelatin print at the time, 1983, and the image I use on the cover of the first photographic book on black and white film, and photo chemistry.

Gold toned Kallitype
"Footbridge in the Forest" ~ 8x10 ~ 1/5
Willamette Valley, Oregon

New Kallitype Print ~ Portfolio II

Once again returning to the Kallitype portfolio printing after switching over to the portfolio of 5x7 platinum/palladium print portfolio, has been instructive. That means a jump from digital negatives to original film negatives with long density ranges, respectively. Now I am back to using digital negatives, and have found a good method of printing those negatives to a consistent density range that will give me an average print time of 10-12 minutes. That is the sweet spot for a Kallitype, for me.

This image is one I have wanted to print for over a year now. The original negative was a 6cmx9cm format, shot with a Century Graflex 6x9 that I did a lot of portraits of children. The old fashioned camera setup, with dark cloth seemed to fascinate them long enough to get off a couple shots before they became bored and began moving about. I have printed digital negatives for this image several times before, with the original intent on printing this image as a salt paper print, using the same process formula I always had; 13% silver solution to 2 1/2% salted paper. That combination demands a lot of density to acquire a decently scaled image. For whatever reason, whenever I made that print the image would solarize, mostly around the subject. No, I haven't a clue. I would make a wild guess that when I was expanding the density range in the software I moved the printable range of that density area out of printable bounds for an RGB image, thereby the solarization. Unless one of you readers has a  more brilliant observation, we'll go with that one.

This image printed very nicely at 10 minutes. Just as I had hoped. I used the sodium acetate developer to keep the image a cool black, then gold toned the print to ensure the cool rich blacks. As all my other images, I use the same Revere Platinum paper, usually always the rougher, open side. I tend to like the textural quality of the image on that side.
This visual area for this print works better a bit smaller than I normally post. Works better when the entire image can be seen.

Gold toned Kallitype
"Adley on the Stump" ~ 8x10 ~ 1/5
Eugene, Oregon