Retooling The System ~ Changing Printers

Honesty tends to be a luxury these days, but being a serial confessor I just bring things into the open for review by all. Dicey at times yet refreshing. I have been blogging for two years on hand coating processes and techniques, mostly because it is something I love and hope will continue well after I'm gone. I didn't change my mind on that front. What has to change is the method for arriving at a usable negative to make the prints I'm showing on this page. That has always been the traditional ink jet printed negative from a thousand dollar printer. Not to happen. Turns out, I did come to realize that the $89 Kodak 3250 printer I bought for my wife to print reference images for her watercolors. That printer has a paper type setting <acetate film> and let me tell you, it does that so well.

After a number of years of printing with that printer, the printer head is wearing out, leaving very subtle streaks on the negative, and of course that shows up in the print. That won't due. The gum over palladium prints I am producing at this time take time to make, not the go into the darkroom for an afternoon and if you make a mistake in a print you can make another one and have it done in an hour. These prints take a week to make, at minimum. Depending on how many color print layers desired it can take up to two weeks to finalize a gum over palladium print. There are two different print images going on, process wise, one over the other. Don't likely need to mention what happens if anything gets out of registration or a coating error occurs. Tossing a finished or nearly finished print that took two weeks to make, is more painful than words convey.

The change I have to make, to retain any sanity, is changing over to laser printed negatives, on laser acetate sheets, not ink jet overhead projection acetate sheets, referred to as acetate film. There is more than one brand of those sheets. Laser printers also work at 600 dpi, not the 300 dpi of ink jet printers. What does show up in the making of the negative is how each type of printer reads the digital image. The same digital image will make two different looking negatives, altering the contrast index curve and density range on the printed negative. I learned this a few hours ago, when I ventured to the print shop I use to print my tri-copy certificates of authenticity. I was told they can print to acetate. Indeed they can, and the nice lady understands what I am after, printing a negative from an image of my choice on the thumb drive.

The results of that interchange can be seen below. I got a straight up laser printed negative of the images I took her, the very images that print perfectly to a negative on my printer, resulting in a 10 minute print time which is a very inspiring finished print. Same digital image laser printed to acetate then printed as a Kallitype (acetate developer) and palladium toned, demands almost twice the print time, and then remains too contrasty. To print down the highlights prints down the middle tones and black shadowed areas, by almost a stop. Knowing that means I will be able to restructure the images to conform to those new variables.

What can be seen is the image is not fully printed in, leaving a sort of hazy look to the overall image. There will be several color layers of gum printed over this image. For this particular image to show the colors reflective of what would be expected, will take six color layers to demonstrate what I have in mind. Could be ten. But first, the image needs to be printed correctly, whereupon the woman's dress is printed in to show the textural detail that it has, as well as bringing down the zone 8 (pure white) of the cat's fur. Then the color layers are applied. Soon, now that I know laser printed negatives work. Stay tuned.

First Test Print ~ Laser Printed Negative
Palladium toned Kallitype ~ 15 minute print time ~ This negative needs 3-4 more minutes print time
"Two Friends" ~ 8x10

Palladium Image ~ Base Layer for Gum over

The palladium print of "Sacred Dance" is now ready for the first color layer. Not much can be said at this time as to how I will ultimately handle that. The standard four color overlay using the CYMK colors is not likely to be the choice. That technique is best suited for pure gum printing, whereupon a definite image with textural detail is needed as a base for highlighting. The palladium print becomes that base, so only those colors that enhance the image further will be considered and applied.

Palladium toned Kallitype ~ Developed in sodium acetate
"Sacred Dance" ~ 8x10

Gum over Palladium printing ~ "Sacred Dance"

There are layers of things that can go wrong when working with any hand coated print, from paper treatment problems, sensitizing mixture irregularities, coating problems, print time and other elements of the process that can ruin an otherwise "good" print. Good, indicating the printer ended up with what they had wanted. Then, there are unexplained artifacts showing up in a hand coated print, over and over, when technically speaking, they really have no plausible explanation, beyond intervening spirits. Yeah, I hear it, don't exist, phantom blame and the like.

I have three images of Native American dancers at a Pow Wow, in full regalia doing their sacred dances. Hence the print image I am currently struggling with, "Sacred Dance". This particular image I have printed over a dozen times, in different processes, and each and every time, there is an unknown and unwanted artifact in the final print. Every single time, no matter how careful I am, when close inspection at every process level indicates nothing that shouldn't be there, but when the developer hits the print, there they are. Having Cherokee blood in my veins tends to pull me to Native spiritual explanations that said Native Americans do not like having their photographs taken, especially surreptitiously, as I captured the dances using a long lens on a digital camera. I won't be positing spirits interfering, however, I will press on, finishing the print with layers of gum, to come.

The 'artifacts' I speak of appear to be birds at a distance, little crooked lines as they would appear a mile away in the air, turning and floating on the warm air at the end of the day, as is normal in Arizona. Each of those 'birds' is directly over the heads of the two Shaman dancers, only. I  am not messing with that. Spirit it is then. The gum layering will begin, although I have yet to finalize the colors used or order of printing. That task begins when the print is fully dry, and in even light where I stare at the image for some length of time until I 'see' how the colors are going to interact with the image and each of the elements. One element is the sky, very late afternoon, which is indicated in the image by the long shadows coming from the dancers. What I am after is that late afternoon golden glow of the light on the dancers. The highlights haven't been fully printed in, as I would normally do. Those highlights will pick up the colors that will be printed into those densities, adding the textural detail and combined color. Printing to the light. The task then, being to hold each color layer right at zone 7, then the rest of the tonal range takes care of itself

The base print image is a palladium toned Kallitype, printed with sodium acetate, leaving a rich black & white image that will show well with the gum colors over. The print now is a palladium print, hence gum over palladium. There is the option of developing the Kallitype in sodium citrate, leaving the print a warm toned image visually synonymous with a palladium print developed in the traditional potassium oxalate formula. One of the advantages of Kallitype printmaking. The Kallitype process also allows for a large variation in density ranges in the negative. The 'look' of the print of course shows the differences, leaving the printer a wide range of options for shaping the final print image.

I will begin photographing this print with tomorrow's post, giving the print time to dry down, and the first gum layer is added. Time will tell how bold I will be in choosing colors, mixture concentrations and color order when I begin applying the colors. I have yet to add any color and I already have three days of work on this image, from paper preparation through printing this first base image. By the time I am anywhere near being finished will be about this time next week, if all goes well and no errors along the way. Any error and the image is junk. I start all over again. Experimentation is something I do very carefully and only after lengthy thought on it and a decent justification of for the efficacy of doing it in the first place. But that's just me. One can just go crazy trying out different options taking you down different avenues, I  do that on the side. Perhaps age has something to do with urges for experimentation. Tomorrow, the base palladium image.

Awaiting Supplies

This is one of those pregnant pauses between action that tends to drive viewers nuts. The primary impulse is to yell "DO SOMETHING!!" Especially in the time of instantaneous living. That's not easy to keep up with when one's considered an old timer. Little do they know. One of the several vagaries of combining writing and photography into a single endeavor is simply that it sucks energy like a four barrel Hollie sucks high grade fuel. That's an indicator of age right there.

The writing/photo endeavor of which I  speak is of course the book on salted paper printing, book #2 in a series, eventually to be five books. It is now officially released and available on amazon or any bookstore. In the course of those efforts I was lucky enough to find a graphic artist for layout work using professional software. That makes the book so much nicer. This was also the first time I included black and white images for comparative use, demonstrating the connection between density range in a negative, and tonal range in the final print. They did their job.

I am awaiting the arrival of new pack of acetate film, and supply of printing paper. I have been using Revere Platinum paper, with excellent results. I found that paper equal to Arches Platine paper, the oldest rag paper for platinum printing there is. What I will be printing on for the next twenty five prints will be Hahnemuhle paper, pre-cut to 11"x15". The paper size I use for gum printing or gum over palladium printing, which is what I am focused on now, is 11"x14", so a simple trim and I have ready to use print paper. For the gum over printing the paper is first pre-shrunk. An easy task with print paper like this. The sheets don't even have a stiffening or wrinkling problem. Really lovely to work with. With this order I'll have sufficient materials for two short portfolios, one of which will be people, several of children. The gum over palladium brings such images to life. Gum over palladium prints are also quite unique, and very rare.

Gum Over Palladium Print

"The Vicar's Window" ~ 8x10 ~ Unique

The final book of the series will be on gum printing, with an entire section on 'gum over' printing; silver, palladium, platinum. This image was printed as a Kallitype; citrate developer, toned in Palladium, then three layers of gum applied until I had the look I wanted.

"The Vicar's Window" ~ Finished Print

I'm feeling pretty good about this print, arriving at the previsualized image I had of this setting. I was hoping to convey the darker natural lighting of the historical room as it was when I observed it. The textural quality of the setting, the adobe walls with late afternoon lighting comes off to me as a sort of deep yellowish color, so very much like Yellow Ochre, to my eye. That is the pigment I used for this print, in varying depths of the three mixed layers used. The reflected light off the wooden shutters, and adobe walls absorb the color layers differently, due to tonal range, as does the window glass from the stairs below. Each tonal range is affected by, and reflects color slightly differently. The darker areas (thinnest negative densities) absorb color first, and keep it the most, yet show it the least. As the tonal range increases, so does the visual visual effect of the color layers, with the tonal ranges between zone 3 and zone 6 showing the colors the most. The more reflective the elements of the scene will show color the most.

As any gum print, or gum over an existing print, the ways of shaping the outcome are literally limitless. A natural urge for me is printing this image a few more times to find that one avenue that stands above the rest. It is also an urge I stifle. The element I had been watching for color shifts was the window glass. That is where the light is coming through. One might expect that light to be yellow, as reflected off interior walls. However, keep in mind afternoon sunlight is bright, and capturing said light as 'yellow(ish)' in the glass would make the larger scene unnatural, phony. The end result being that this print image is as close to my visual experience of the scene when I captured it.

Comparing this image to the previous one in the last post will have quite a visual impact for the viewer, having first seen the very colored (yellowish) image to this final one. That yellow seen is the yellow dichromate stain that gets cleared when the print is finally done. As an FYI, should the printer decided that after clearing, the image just simply doesn't look 'finished', nothing says the print can't be dried like it would be between printings, and more color layers added as desired. I will confess that I personally like the more deliberate ambient yellow color of the pre-cleared image. I love really warm toned scenes. Always have, yet I am more inclined to work towards the more natural lighting of a scene as experienced, more than wanting to alter that to something else. I certainly find nothing wrong with that approach, for those more inclined to actually see the colors they are working with. Hence, the window glass is mostly the white light entering the room, although the color begins to show as reflected light off textured surfaces, which is how light leaves color.

Gum over Palladium
"The Vicar's Window" ~ 8x10 ~ Unique