"Adley on the Stump II" ~ Layer 3

The final split layer of color has been added. The treatment was to further separate the image into cool and warm toned colors, as well as intensify the image by increasing contrast through adding to the lower tonal range while holding the highlights at their current level, while adding subtle color(s).  All elements of the image have been covered more than once, using very sheer layers of color. The intent is to subtly influence the image from the pigment without being able to see the pigment. The "Makeup" rule. The Corollary to this rule is: "It takes teenage girls two years to learn the "Makeup" rule.

This print is nearing completion now. The primary layout of color applications have done their job. A good amount of the actual colors are too subtle for me to actually see them. What I can see are the differences between the warm and cool tones, being I put them there and at least know what I'm looking for. There is 'skin tone' on Adley, hopefully ending in a suntan sort of way. All of these colors are currently being heavily influenced by a predominant yellow color, which is the dichromate stain. To 'see' the colors at this time one must be able to subtract yellow from what is being seen. The clearing bath at the end clears that stain out nicely though.

Layer #4: Split color

Adley on the Stump II ~ Print Layer 2

This second gum layer was a split color application. This is where the colors begin to play off each other, warm and cool tones, as well further separation between highlights and shadows. Each new application of gum darkens the area covered, even if slightly, with the most noticeable darkening in the lower tonal range, deepening shadows, separating further from lighted areas and even mid tones. The printing control is focused exclusively on the highlights, most specifically, zone 7. That is the print time point.

Once the printer finds that print time point, for that negative, with the corresponding preferred float time, that controls the highlights, just as development time controls the negative densities representing the highlights. Same principle. Once the highlights are reached, all the zones/tonal ranges below are pretty much permanent. That is not to say that one isn't able to work backwards several tonal ranges of gum removal. It can be done, by increasing water temperature, length of float time, even begin physical removal with a brush or stream of water. Unless one is saving the image from an ill conceived application, wanting to rid as much as possible, such removal techniques are destructive to an otherwise fine image.

I have had to resort to extended techniques of gum removal, but it was not for enhancement, it was therapeutic, having seen a line of gum color migration over an lighter area not intending to receive any of that color, when it was almost too late. As mentioned before I fail to see red/green unless it is real obvious. Subtle shades mixed within other colors and lots of gray and colors disappear, falling into a sort of neutral gradient. I saw the color run only because it was across a lighter area, and I see patterns and shades well enough. The object was to get that streak removed. When you heat the water sufficiently to do such a job, it would be somewhere over 80 F to 90F, and retain any control over removal, as at that temperature the entire matrice of gum layers begin to soften, any gum not fully dried before would begin to loosen, over the entire image area.

I used a small tipped artist's brush and water at about 80 F and daubed the water over the run until it was soft, then used another smaller and stiffer brush to wipe back and forth over the run until it was gone. And that is why I keep my float temperature below 68 F, preferrably around 65 F. In doing this, the floating affect on the gum is slowed to a crawl, thus allowing me more control. The object of each print layer is to print up to the desired tonal range. That demands the printer knows the print time to reach, and go just beyond zone 7, to float the gum back to a desired point in zone 7. If warm water is used, the entire gum layer is affected a lot. When cold water is used, it stiffens the gum, holding it in place without floating away, so during the floating, the majority of gum floated off is strictly at the highlights. The maneuver is to float just enough away to show zone 7 fully. Zone 7 is the 'top' print point. This negative needed a twelve minute palladium print time, the zone 7 print point for me then is 15 minutes, which proved to be true. With a one minute float time in 65 F water, the gum is just beginning to come off zone 7. A two minute float time would remove even more of zone 7, leaving the color beneath it, which is what I did with this print.

Zone 7 print time is 15 minutes on this image, and for this color layer I didn't want to cover over the ochre color underneath the raw umber color I was applying. The print time I used this layer was 12 minutes. Enough time to print up to the highlights but not remain during the float time. All the darker tones beneath zone 7 get the benefit of this new color layer. Another benefit of the colder water, as noted earlier keeps the gum from running, due to very soft gum. Water temperature is one of the control variables at hand.

Gum Layer #2 ~ Split color ~ Pthalo Blue and Raw Umber
The gum was applied locally for deepening the shadows, coloring the  mid-tones and increasing separation between tonal values in foreground to background.
* Note: The prevailing yellowish color over the image is the dichromate stain.

Adley on the Stump II ~ Yellow Ochre layer

There is probably little need for showing each layer of gum as it is applied, being so much of what is happening is lost in the viewing, unless one knows the color layer that will go on top of the one being seen. Sometimes even I don't know what the next color will be until it shows itself. Before I begin working with any colors, I set the print in the coating plate (artist's clipboard of Masonite) and tape it in place, then set it upright, then just sit there and stare into the scene for awhile and color choices begin to show themselves, and it is from there that I begin plotting the color layers and what that will mean in the end, where to apply the colors, and how thickly, all of which ultimately is determined by the tonal layer the color is on, the print time, the float time and the float water temperature.

This is an art, not a scientific experiment. I studies Experimental Design, I know how that works. It's good when dealing with the chemistry portion, but a lousy guide for the aesthetics of printing. Colors are a personal choice. The gum printing process follows the rules of watercolors, subtractive color theory. Using that as a guide, the colors are stacked in printed layers, each adding an affect on the color below them. A layer of Yellow Ochre, followed by a layer of Pthalo Blue becomes green(ish) with the value from a China blue/green to a slightly bluish green, depending on which color is over and the density of the two mixtures. This is done using an artist's color pallet, mixing colors to the artist's liking. There is no measurements in mixing or formulas for order of color. There is artistic expression at ever step.

The first color layer is Yellow Ochre, a 'medium' mix. About the point when the light showing through is dim. It was brushed on the entire image, soon followed by local applications on the darker foliage, but not the lighter area in the background, setting up for the next color layer of Pthalo Blue, mixed slightly lighter, leaving it sheer, then applied only on the darker foliage, over the thickened Ochre, with the intent of arriving at a recognizable green, of some tone and hue. A comparison of prints shows a bit of shift on the highlights on the stump, and on Adley's clothes. That will get bolstered in subsequent layers.

Gum over Palladium ~ Layer #1 ~ Yellow Ochre
"Adley on the Stump" ~ 8x10

Adley on the Stump ~ Palladium Base Print

The new palladium base print to become a gum over palladium print when finished. I began the discussion in yesterday's post about altering the print negatives for this process. I would continue that discussion by noting that the negative densities are reliant upon the light source used for printing. As the light source intensity increases, so should the density range of the negative. Roughly speaking. There is a direct correlation between density and light intensity. As I've noted before I designed and built my UV printer with 160W of power, using (8) 18" UV bulbs in a 20"x24" printer bed, with the lights being 12" from the table top. Hence, the optimal density range for that printer, with a print time between 10 and 12 minutes for a full scaled image.

The image here was printed as a Kallitype, developed in sodium acetate and toned in palladium (5ml/liter). It is now a palladium print. I began yesterday's post by noting that I have gone from salt paper to Kallitype processing because of more control over the print color, and, I don't need the negatives scaled as high. The Kallitype process is basically identical to palladium printing. Same processing procedure, same order and same chemistry, with exception to printing with palladium or silver, then toned palladium, if that's one's choice, otherwise a gold toner makes the blacks much deeper and richer. Gold, however generally doesn't fully replace the silver salts, with an exception, normally gold coats the silver salts.

In both processes, the clearing agent used is EDTA, with a slightly different mixing for palladium than used in silver. Palladium doesn't use a fixer, but does have a sort hypo clearing back using sodium sulfite, much like silver. There are several developers for the Kallitype, each bringing out a different print color, from a reddish color, sepia, purplish, brown and black. The temperature of the developing bath also shifts color, another variable to use. Due to these similarities, and being I also print directly with palladium, and platinum/palladium (Na2) process, keeping the development as constant as possible is most helpful.

This image was taken with a Century Graflex 6x9 (cm) format camera. The first shot I took is now a platinum/palladium print in an edition of 5. I knew this young girl wasn't going to stay on that stump very long, and just as I had pulled out the cut film holder after the first shot, flipped it over and reinserted it and pulled out the dark slide I saw her lift up the basket with her arm and begin to jump down. I just grabbed the shutter release cord and squeezed. After I stare at the image long enough the treatment I'll use and the colors selected will come to me.

Palladium Print
"Adley on the Stump" ~ 8x10
Eugene, Oregon (back yard portrait area)

New Gum over Palladium Print Beginning

The lengthy hiatus since the last posting of "Two Friends" is most regrettable, as I try hard to keep the momentum moving along just so there aren't long blank periods. Truth be told I was working on a home project, long promised to my sweet wife, finally done. We live in the desert whereupon a yard here is covered in two inches of river rock, or more. I just shoveled and moved 14 yards/tons of said river rock, spreading it over an eighth of an acre, in the desert heat. Such is life.

I have had to adapt my normal negative printing setup, to gum over printing demands, which calls for a different density range for the negative. This new arrangement begins in conjunction with also altering how the negatives are printed. Whereas I have always printed my own negatives on inkjet printers, being I am one that wants full control over the process, for obvious reasons. The advancement of inkjet printers continues with the focus on making finished prints on art papers. That direction improves the outcome of the prints on paper, using ever more ink cartridges with wider array of colors. My one and only use of an inkjet printer is making a negative. Using a new Epson or Canon printer to make my negatives would cost me ten times what I pay to have a laser negative printed onto acetate, at 600dpi, not 300dpi. I'm quite happy with the results. My task was to set the density range of the negatives to match the laser printer being used, which is entirely different than inkjet printers, and no two laser printers are set the same, as they can be adjusted for output density onto acetate.

The new print is drying as I write this. I will copy it once it has dried down, for tomorrow's post. It is the base image for the new gum over print to come. For now, I am working with the "poor man's" palladium print. It is said that one century ago there were likely more "poor man's" platinum's than printed platinum's. As most photographers know, platinum is rather expensive, many times more than palladium and probably a hundred times more than silver. When a silver image is toned in platinum, or palladium, the more nobler metal totally replaces the silver salts with the Pt/Pd salt, thereby making the print a Pt or Pd print. If you make a mistake or there is any flaw in a printed platinum image, of course it doesn't get sold or used, and that means throwing away a bunch of money. If you print the image in silver, then tone in platinum, you have a platinum to show. I do this with palladium.

Any silver print can be toned to a palladium print. Thirty five years ago when I worked gum over printing I printed over salted silver prints; salt paper process. I still have them. Today I prefer to make Kallitype prints. One of the reasons is the ability to control the print color, by developers and developing temperature. The Kallitype process is the same process as modern platinum or palladium printing, for the most part. There are caveats with platinum and the developers. Palladium has a much longer tonal range potential than platinum. Palladium can handle the full scale of a salted silver print, which can print an image using a negative of Log 1.8, or higher. Platinum would not respond well to such a negative, but palladium would.

The negatives I am using now for gum over printing are, for all practical purposes, the densities I would use for a grade two silver gelatin paper; Log .8 to .9. I know this because I now have a densitometer, and I've been doing much comparison to other negatives and their reciprocal prints. I would not have believed it if I didn't have prints right in front of me demonstrating that fact rather nicely. Dry down is important so I won't be posting the image here. What I would like to mention is that for whatever reason, I happened to check the "Stats" section under the posting icon, to find two dozen visits with over eighty page clicks, all from Russia. I must say I feel very honored by that.

If one of those visitors was Maria V. Vinogradova I would be a lot more honored. It wasn't until very recently that I came to find two other gum over printers, one of them being Maria V. Vinogradova, who lives in Moscow, and makes some very beautiful gum over cyanotype prints. Her technique is flawless, her images glow. I should also mention the other gum over printer I know, out of fairness, and that would be Diana Bloomfield, of North Carolina. As it turns out, Diana was in Tucson very recently giving a workshop in gum over palladium printing. Kudos to that.

Since this has morphed into a short ramble, I would mention a thought I have held since I began printing again. In the late 1980's I was one of the founding members of the Eugene/Irkutsk Sister City Committee, and as a board member I chaired the committee newsletter and did the photographic recording of events and people. At that time I had a commercial photographic/video production studio. It was through this that a Russian/American photographer exchange was devised and planned, with several Russian photographers being part of it. Many of those photographs hung on my studio walls, as can be seen in the photo. I'm the one pointing towards Russian version of the Welcome signs. While I was setting up the formal group photograph, in a studio full of photographers, this shot was taken. It is my hope that some day, once again photographers from both countries will share their images.
Eugene/Irkutsk Sister City Committee Photographers Exchange; 1990