Tombstone Print ~ OK Corral

It was sort of a shootout today, finding just how contaminated the water is in the old Barrio, old iron plumbing from a century ago, puts so much iron materials in the water and just a drop, just touch that stuff and the paper you want to lay silver solution on and dark splotches show up like a filthy disease. the negatives I took with me were ones I prepared using the Burkholder method. For whatever reason, that increased the densities at the high end making the prints almost impossible to print down. Not a problem with Dan's method. Something I overdid in the negative.

I have already revisited the negatives and reworked them my personal way of density assignment though visual inspection. Another set of negatives are ready for printing, at which time I will be able to put prints side by side with two methods of setting up the negative.

For whatever reason, the density range went wild on the negative of the stagecoach, putting the upper zones out of printable range. The print below is a Kallitype, toned in palladium. Zone 6 is barely printed in and Zone 7 & 8 aren't apparent. The adjustment I made was a small curved bulge to the curve, then tone the image green, as all other negatives.

Palladium toned Kallitype ~ "Stagecoach on Main Street"
8"x10" ~ Revere Platinum paper ~ Black developer

Palladium toned Salt Paper Print ~ "OK Corral"
8"x10" ~ Arches 140lb cream

In both prints, the upper tonal ranges were much too dense for printing in relative to the middle tones, suppressing them, as seen in the image above, with the higher tonal range, roof & store front on top, have lost all texture and detail. Next negative will be one I set up using my own method.

The Kallitype print of the Stage coach was a twenty five minute print, on a Kallitype. Very serious densities. I am having to learn to dial back on the densities way more than I had first anticipated, having had to use them before the spectral density variable came into play. I am not at all convinced the spectral color affects all density ranges equally. I believe they retard the higher opacities proportionately more than the lower tonal ranges. Still sorting that one out.

If all works out as planned there will be corrected prints to show before the week is up. Stay tuned.

Printing Day ~ New Negatives

I will be printing the negative I posted yesterday in a couple hours. Titillating possibilities, as well as a bit of apprehension, being I've already posted the negative to be used, ergo... I will be bringing back a finished print that will exceed promising, and of course be visually awesome. Reminds me of the fishing host/guide on the television program I was taping, with constant high anxiety each and every show, just the possibility of not actually hooking into a fish and be able to to yell... "Fish On!". Well, in the words of a now dead war hero... Charge! That's all I can do at this point. Wish me well....

New Negatives ~ Working Formula

The search for the grail of best printable density ranges for printing in silver has pretty much run its course. Mostly. Still a lot of things that will be tested, to continue fine tuning the process. What has proven out well is the sort of hybrid process PJ has conjured up through his efforts in Photoshop, which I don't have. The closest thing I have is Corel Paintshop Pro, which I would recommend to any photographer doing digital imagery.

The last negative test was using PJ's visually inspected density manipulation through various density ranges related to the hue factor that was coupled with it. There is a mutual influence taking place between PJ and me. PJ's negatives, for my historical tastes, were rather thin. He has been seeing the negatives I have been handing him, and how they print, and has accordingly begun pumping up the densities of his image considerably. Reciprocally, I come from negative densities that one can skate on, and am coming to realize such densities don't need to be applied to be printable. There is a commonality in that reciprocal relationship; the spectral density of green toning of the negative image.

What I am seeing happening is that our negatives have now arrived at about the same place, both using green toned negatives, with densities that could easily be intertwined without altering much of the image structure. That tells me we're moving in the right direction, arriving at a density range setup that is printing as we like, respectively. The previous images I've been posting are nearing a final stage of printing, so I have begun flipping through folders of images I've kept on a separate drive. Too many to count. Being I live in an old western town in the Sonoran Desert, not far from the Mexican border, I need to look through the western focused images. These will be the next negatives used to print. This is how I prefer to view the image when making decisions about the finished print.

8x10 Negative ~ Green Toned
OK Corral; Tombstone, Arizona

8x10 Negative ~ Green Toned
Stagecoach Main Street ~ Tombstone, Arizona

Test Day Prints ~ Catching Up

Life continues to demand my total attention from time to time, as it's known to do. My mother often intoned the creepy phrase..."there's no rest for the wicked". Not that everything went to hell after that, just a cautionary tale my mother was known to savor. Life contingencies dealt with I am once again working on images. I learned some things, last printing session.

Working with the negative densities as we have has given us the expected bio-feedback loop of visually realizing the proper densities of an image by repeated exposure to comparison of digital negative to finished print. Windy way of talking about familiarity. Now finally having an 11x14 print frame means uncut digital negatives and larger paper size for coating. Which calls for larger trays, more chemistry, and well, you know about that. We had just cycled out of all 8x10 paper we had been  using, with the smaller frame. The paper used in these test prints were  two variations of Canson paper; 90lb and 140lb respectively. Both were prepared for salt paper printing, at 2 1/2% (sodium chloride) There isn't a lot of difference in print image from these papers than from the lighter weight Canson paper and Arches Platine paper I had used before, respectively.

Although I did like the heavier Canson paper I used, I am liking even more the Revere Platinum paper, that arrived in time to try it out. That paper doesn't have a lot of information on it but I learned a valuable lesson on the print I made. Each side of the paper was slightly different, in the same way as on Platine. I got curious about just how an image might sit on the smoother side. That image is below. I probably wouldn't do it again, as part of the quality of a hand coated image is how it interacts with the paper. For me, having the image sit completely on the surface doesn't enhance it.

I also must confess to pulling out the wrong digital negative for the dancing Indians image. One rather flat, not having been enhanced with increased densities. It basically printed, just not fully as it could have. The Lilies were printed on Revere Platinum, on the smoother, more sealed side of the paper. Hopefully the next foray into the darkroom will be with the new negatives I just finished preparing, with all improvements we have come to learn over the past weeks. The flat bottom toning tray has yet to arrive, to my painful chagrin. Thus toning must wait just a bit longer.

Binder: 2 1/2% sodium chloride ~ Canson 140lb hot press uncoated stock
Silver; 2 Coats ~ 13% (saturated) ~ with Citric Acid (2g) ~ gelatin sizing 7g/1000ml
Soft negative;

Un-toned Salted Silver Print ~ "Sacred Dance" ~ 8x10

Un-toned Kallitype ~ "Lilies" ~ 8x10
Printed on smooth 'closed' side of paper. Image sits right on top.

Test Day Print ~ Salted Silver

Today's test print was a reprint of the Chateau Scene I had printed using the bulged curve method to increase the density range. What remained constant was the green toned image. The green tone controls the print time. The tonal range of the print is controlled by the density range of the negative. I took Burkholder's method of bulging the curve, except I apparently got too excited, and my bulge was more like Berle Ives wasteline than Dan's curve.

This was the negative that PJ created in Photoshop, right in front of my eye and still I cannot tell you what he was doing. He had used the Photoshop command to turn the RGB negative into a 'black and white', which it promptly did, also bringing up a control window with half a dozen hue controls, much like a CYMK representation, with a couple others added. By using the slider on each hue control reciprocally added or decreased density in different tonal ranges. Also assigned to this 'black and white' image, was the green tone needed to hold back print time. Technically speaking, it could be said that an overall green tone on an image should retard the UV light in all areas, tonal ranges, equality. Ergo, the heuristic value of using the spectral density isn't altering the tonal range of a print, but to retard UV light, increasing the print time, which does have some affect on the finished print.

A negative with a print time of three minutes, which I have, will result in a print with a shorter tonal range, flatter, than a print with the same density range on a negative, with the color (spectral density) added, (which happens to be green). The same negative, toned green as we are applying, will add approximately 10 minutes to that print time. That added time will increase dMax drastically. It takes several minutes of print time on a hand coated silver print to come near reaching dMax. Ten minutes and it is certainly possible with our Solar Printer. But not in sunlight, unless pointed into the sun.

What the two prints showed clearly is that PJ's method works extremely well controlling the various tonal ranges for more fine tuning. After I had left yesterday after printing my new negative, he continued to work  on our new system, of intuitive density assignment of tonal values by visual inspection, then an added spectral density for print timing. I am told he can now select any desired density area, using masking and layering, to control that specific area for manipulation of all sorts. This of course is deeply exciting to me. We treated print paper for salted silver printing, and my new Revere Platinum paper arrived upon returning home today. Monday is going to be another delicious day in the darkroom.

Two print images from two negatives, using two methods of preparing the negatives. The first image was my using the curves function to bend the middle tones upward adding probably... seemingly double the density of the original. Both prints were salted silver prints, on Canson White paper, un-sized and at 3% salt binder on the paper. I had misjudged the efficacy of the spectral density, accounting for the way to dense middle. That was a 30 minute print time.

Image number two is the same image, this time manipulated by PJ in Photoshop as described above, increasing the density range, seen in the middle area, from the house towards the viewer, separation that wasn't seen in the first image. This print also had the same green tone treatment. This was an
8 minute print time. The density range between the tonal value doesn't have to be as extreme as I had been making them, before finding the path to spectral density. I am also coming to realize that another way of altering print time is to back off the UV intensity. But that's another article.

Palladium toned Salted Silver ~ "Chateau Scene"
30 min print time ~ bulging the middle densities of the 'curves' function (overdone, much too dense)
Tones in front of house is mostly one tonal range, also mountains and clouds not nearly printed in.

Palladium tone Salted Silver Print ~ "Chateau Scene"
8 minute print time ~ PJ's manipulated tonal range
Tones in front of house has separated some with PJ's manipulation
Another manipulation will increase the separation between tonal densities. The final area to intensify is the sky, the bilious clouds should be the same density as the house. When the house prints to Zone 7 the clouds will be at Zone 7.