New Gum Over Palladium Print

The past month has not been technologically kind to me. For me to create negatives at home is no longer cost effective. Printers that are capable of inking a sheet of acetate film; i.e., Pictorico OHP Acetate Film, sufficiently to make a palladium print, cost well over $500 (manufacture's price) and are now costing almost several more times that in the market. An Epson 3880 printer lists on Amazon today for $2450. What is unknown at this time is if an Epson 1430 is capable of making a good negative. Epson reps don't know the answer to that question. If you can find that printer, it is likely a used or perhaps refurbished model, and sells for over $300; $900+ new.

I have found a commercial printer who grasped the conditioned I rattled off to her, and a test negative using one of the adjustment <curve> I made for my printer. Turns out her laser printer needs less curve to do the same job, at 600dpi. That marriage has yet to be celebrated, because as soon as I was informed that the format needed for this printing demanded a pdf file, not tiff. Not to worry, I have Lightroom 4, and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, right? All of a sudden now, Lightroom simply refuses to produce a pdf file like it always has. Now, see, it's here that demons or evil spirits have invaded my workspace. For $150 I just bought Lightroom 6, which should easily take care of the pdf problem, as well as offer up some updated tools and abilities from the older version that grandpa used, probably when DOS was around, and people knew what that meant.

So I have had to shift focus for a few days until my software CD arrives and I can once again begin having negatives printed. Perhaps due to having decent karma I have two negatives I had printed earlier, before the print head streaking took hold. They will keep the printing moving in the interim. This particular image "Girl with Flower" will be given to an old friend whom I showed basic black and white photography and developing/printing techniques, and took that and ran with it. His work was excellent. Over the years he collected a number of twins lens cameras, having sent me two Rolleicord 1A twin lens cameras, to chose one I liked, send the other back. Three rolls of film later I know which will go home now.

This print is a palladium toned Kallitype, developed in sodium citrate, toned in palladium rich toner formula, one I use being it mimics a platinum/palladium print color, a bit cooler, more neutral tone than the weaker toner solution using 1ml or 2ml per liter of palladium. I use 5ml/liter. I didn't post the palladium image after printing as I've posted numerous palladium toned Kallitypes using the same formula. This image has the first gum color layer added. What I'm working on with this layer was finding the print point for zone 7, which in this case is the girl's dress, which is hovering between zone 7, where I want it, and zone 8 as it is right now. There will be several more layers printed in before this image is finished. Then it will be sent to my friend Ed.

Two things to notice in this image. First, it's square, which will be a theme upcoming for my street shooting images, from the Rolli.  And secondly, the slightly out of focus of this shot, as I saw this young lady as she is coming around to the front of my house. She was the daughter of Ed's girlfriend at the time; 1984(ish). I happened to be carrying a very early Argoflex twin lens camera I bought for $18 and was trying it out. I hurried over to where she was trying not to "charge her" and freak her out, so casually I walked over and looked down, did a quick focus as I closed in, and pushed down on the shutter release. I'm slightly focused behind here, but I don't believe it distracts from the moment, when the print is done. The task now, besides adding color depth to the image, is printing down the girl's dress to a textural range.

Palladium toned Kallitype
"Girl with Flower" ~ 8x10 ~ Unique
Eugene, Oregon