:Two Buccaneers" ~ Gum over Palladium

This has been a print I have wanted to print for a number of years. Shot while taking my daughter and grandsons to see the last of the square rigger iron hull sailing ship. I shot this with a fairly long lens, to be away from the subjects, hopefully getting a more natural setting.

This print is an 11"x14" gum over palladium print. I have tried to keep the coloring as natural as possible, although variations upon the theme happen in gum printing, especially when the printer is color blind to red/green.

Gum over Palladium Print

"Two Buccaneers" 11x14

"Bella with Hat" ~ Gum over Palladium print

 This print won't go into the portfolio. It is destined to hang on my son and his wife's wall; his eldest daughter, my granddaughter, age five at the time. This was a special print for me, being who it was I was capturing on paper. The image wasn't difficult to print, being the elements printed out well using the standard CYMK formula; the palladium print being the K layer, then cyan [turquoise], cadmium yellow, then quinacridone magenta the third layer.

The image wasn't quite right with the overall color, what I could perceive of it anyway, so I asked my daughter, who sees the fuller color spectrum, what overall color she saw of the print. She said "platinum", which told me that the image was neutral, so, I added a layer of raw umber, in a shear mix, to represent skin tones, and warm the print overall. The final color layer was applied to her hat, using violet, again, in a fairly shear mix, enough hopefully that the color can be discerned by the viewer. I have to confess I don't really see that color, just the added depth of the image from the added color layer. I was also told, there is a small streak of red on her. Well, I still am unable to see it. That would have derived of the magenta run. A signature of the printer, color blind to red/green.

Gum  over Palladium Print

"Bella with Hat"

"Pow Wow Dancers" ~ Gum over Palladium Print

I have finally completed thel third and final print of the "Pow Wow Dancers" print series. It has taken a lot of time to complete the series, being the nature of the printing, that takes weeks to complete a print. Any  single irregularity or mistake and the print is jumk, start over. This print turned out to be sixteen print layers, using over twenty color mixtures. My printing in gum continues to evolve. The very nature of gum printing is a process without end, or boundaries.

When I began printing, controlling the tonal range of the image was paramount. That no longer is a primary factor for me. The overall lighting, the mood, is the focus now. Manipulating and controlling the light with each successive color layer becomes dicey, with each new print layer. A miscalculation of color density, or color choice can add to the image or destroy it. The destroyed versions are painful.

Gum over Palladium Print

"Wow Wow Dancers"

Tucson, Arizona

"Two Ponies Wild" [Reprint] Gum Dichromate Print

 I have become very, very finicky with the outcome of a gum print these days. Reprint however many times it takes to arrive at how I had pre-visualized it, what it could be when done right. Painful a that always is. This gum print of "Two Ponies Wild" is the third iteration. That was posted a few posts ago, so comparisons are possible.The gum print is the rarest of the photographic processes today. Competent printers are few and mighty rare. That is because gum printing has no order, nor bounaries, beyond the chemical/phisical applications one chooses. Gum prints are multi-color-layered carbon prints; photographic watercolors.

These days, I only work on one print at a time, and only make one final print; all unique. Working on a print for weeks makes that journey unique, and very personal. When a print is finally finished, after weeks of work, the last thing I would want to do is try and make a copy of it. Gum printing has to do with making Art, not commercial replication as a business. But that's just me.

Being a reprint of the same image; printed differently, the only things that have been altered are the color mixtures, and the order of the color layers, print times for that arrangement, float time and temperature to suit the layer. Now, it is finished, the earlier copy destroyed.

Gum Dichromate Print

"Two Ponies Wild"

Eastern Arizona

"Lily Pond" ~ Gum Dichromate Print

 It has taken me much time, printing this image. There were several hurdles. This print is the third printing, as the first two simply weren't what I knew they could be. I no longer work on more than one print at a time now. Gum printing is the most personally expressive photographic process there is. There are no standard "this is how you do it". There is standard process, as in mixing a color into a colloid, mix that in equal parts with a dichromate, brush onto the paper, print. There are eight controlling variables to gum printing. Each, shapes the final image.

One of the more difficult tasks for me, is making a digital  copy of a finished print, and make it look like the original print. I generally fail at that task. The original print is always visually much richer than the digital imitation o fit. The blacks for instance, are much deeper in the print than in the copy. And being color blind to red/green [reflective] it's hard to tell if I got the flower to the color intended. What I failed to 'see' in the first two print attempts, wasn't the sequence of color layers, but the order and print time.

As in all photographic printing, one prints for the highlights. Everything else falls into place as decided by the Contrast Index Curve [shape of the CI curve; steeper = more contrasty] and, the density range of the negative [the difference between zone-1 and whatever represents the brightest density in the image, usually considered zone-7; or white, with full texture.] Blank white is zone 8. Each color layer can be printed to the tonal range desired. The first color was Payne's Gray; for 3 minutes. Just enough time to print in zone 1 thru zone 3. Then  Turquoise; for 8 minutes, printing through zone 5 and into the  yellowish frond, zone 6. The floating for that layer removed most of the color from that frond, and most of the flower. Cadmium yellow followed, for ten minutes, enough time to remain on the yellow frond after floating, but not enough time to affect the flower. Final layer was Violet, and only on the flower.

That was the basic approach. I did as noted above, but repeated the turquoise and yellow print runs to double the textural detail on the fronds and darken the water. Another variable being the amount of color is added each layer. For quick printing, make the color mixtures opaque. For finer printing, with textural detail and tonal separations, shear mixtures with vibrant coloring, yet see through. That is my approach these days, adding as many layers as needed, using color layering that allows the light to pass through the layers and return with the sum of all the colors This print has eight color layers.

Gum Dichromate Print;

"Lily Pond" ~ 8"x10" Unique