The Power of Selenium

  I've spoken many times on this blog of how much i enjoy working a negative until i get the final print that i want.  I love working out the dodging and burning for different areas of the print and thinking about the toning i want to do to complete it.  That being said, this print was an absolute killer.  Once again it is from my recent holiday away to the eats cast of England to enjoy the pleasant life of a fishing village for a week.  I have been here many times before and fancied some new spots to shoot so i had a quick look around online before i headed out.  A little bit of research revealed a somewhat hidden bay on the coast complete with rock shelves and nabs (a nab is an outcrop of rock which the sea has not eroded - think stack).  Perfect!  We ended up going there for a day midweek and had a fantastic time walking the dog and relaxing on he sand and rocks.  Of course, i had my Bronica kit with me and was going a bit trigger happy.  I took this shot low to the ground with a nice shapely rock in the foreground and a distant nab and cliff in the background.  The sky seemed good so marvelous, i could burn that in as much as need be upon my return to the darkroom.

  After i developed etc i setup a flat print (after determining the best overall exposure using split grade test strips) i got a flat print exposure.  And it looked rubbish.  So, off i went exploring my dodging and burning options - sheet after sheet after sheet after sheet of paper was used (i was using Slavich Unibrom for it's cold tone and nice heavy weight).  I got a print i was semi happy with and decided to tone (after a wash of course).  I copper toned for a short period then put it into selenium - after a few minutes large white spots started to appear (this is where we learn to selenium tone before copper) so i scrapped it, deciding it didn't look right anyway.

  No amount of dodging and burning that i did made the print look right.  I wanted something dark and i just wasn't getting it.  Perhaps i'm just not at the skill level to do that kind of print yet - hopefully one day i will be.  It's prints like these that really test me!

This is the best i got alas.

   After hours of trying and eventually running out of Unibrom i knew it wasn't happening - i just couldn't get any "pop" out of the print.  I decided to clear my mind and approach it from a lith point of view.  Sometimes, if i'm honest, lith feels like a bit of a cop-out.  I suppose that's because i'm not spending hours configuring dodging and burning charts, i'm just picking an exposure and slapping some paper in a tray.  There is more skill to it than that, and there's nothing wrong with dodging and burning for lith - a fact i had to reassuring myself with.

  Now one of mankind's oldest questions - which paper to use.  After much deliberation i decided to go for Fotospeed Lith paper as i knew it would give me a dark feel and suitable colouring.  So, i picked my exposure and developed until the sky had good detail.  After snatching, fixing and washing i was left with this:

  Good, i thought, but not quite there.  The shadows are a bit...green..!  As is usual with my lith prints i like to see how they react to selenium toner.  In this instance i chose a dilution of 1:5 as i knew it would give more of a colour change than a weaker ratio.  I popped the print into the tray and it went nuclear!  The shadows got absolutely obliterated, the sky darkened dramatically and almost all detail was lost in the foreground rock.  I felt crushed - all that hard work wasted.  I decided to let it dry and think about my next step.

  After a few days of moping about and being busy with work i went back to look through my prints and you know what - i decided i liked the final print i got.  I was suitably dark and it was moody.  It probably isn't going to go down in history as one of my greatest prints but i like it so i decided to leave it there and move on to another negative.  But then again - looking at the above photo of my pre-toned print, i'm liking that as well...

  One thing we learn - never underestimate the power of selenium!

The Thoughtful Cliff

  So despite saying in my previous post that i was going to update more i haven't updated in over two weeks!  Sorry!  But, good news - i have made my first print from my recent holiday to the north east coast of England, and here it be:

  I shot this on a very sunny day in the town of Saltburn.  It is printed onto Ilford MGIV FB Warmtone paper using Ethol LPD diluted 1:4 and toned using selenium 1:9 and a bit of sepia.  This is my first time using a non-neutral developer and i have to say i loved it.  If you are unfamiliar with LPD it is a wonderful developer which allows you to change tonality (not contrast) using dilution e.g. use it 1:1 for cool tones and around 1:4 for warmer tones (obviously tonality will depend very much on the paper you are using too). 

I like to think of the clouds as little thought bubbles coming out of the cliff. 

  I'm pretty pleased with this print, i really feel like i am starting to get into a rhythm and personal style with my printing.

  I made this print using the split grade printing technique, as i have done with so many others.  I did a soft exposure test strip, selected the best exposure for highlights (remembering to go a bit heavy as the sepia toning i had planned would lose a little highlight detail), then i did a hard exposure test strip and selected the best exposure for that (again, taking into account the added density that selenium toning would yield).  It's always good to have a good think about toning either before printing or during proofing so that you can account for any lost/added density that may result form the toners you use (that reminds me - i should really do a few tutorials covering toning).   I knew with this print that i wanted a selenium/sepia split so i deliberately overexposed the highlights and very slightly underexposed the shadows.

  So, after making a base print of my combined soft and hard exposures it was time to think about dodging and burning.  The cliff was looking pretty blocked up so i did a bit of a burn on the soft exposure and a dodge on the hard exposure - this evened out the contrast a little whilst maintaining the "pop" of the cliff.  Then i did a very slight hard exposure burn on the sky to add a little extra depth to the clouds (the use of a grad filter at the time of exposure had already helped darken the sky to a pleasing tone).  Then i did a bit of an edge burn around the sides and base of the print to draw the eye into the centre (i did this on both the soft and hard exposure).  I think this really works on the base of the print as if the sand was all the same mid tone the eye would be drawn off the bottom of the image.

  To finish off the print i did some very very light bleaching (followed by a fix) of the cloud highlights and the band of light across the sand (i used potassium ferricyanide/potassium bromide bleach from a sepia kit diluted 1:9).  This helped add a bit more "pop" to the highlights but i had to be carfeul that this combined with sepia toning would not cause any highlight detail to be lost.

  After a good wash (in my newly constructed print washer) i bleached back the print until the upper midtones were just starting to be affected and then toned in standard sepia toner.  After a quick wash i then transferred the print into selenium toner mixed 1:5 for a few minutes which added a nice dark purplish hue to the print.  I then did a final wash and left the print to dry before scanning.

  I'm really pleased with how this print turned out and i am loving Ethol LPD as a print developer.  I'm going to try some coldtone papers with it soon and a stronger dilution and see what effects i can get.  In the meantime i've still got plenty more frames to be printing from my trip away.

  I hope some of you have found this post useful and, as always, keep printing.

Branching Out With Slavich Unibrom

  I have made no secret on this blog and on various groups and forums of the struggles I have had with Slavich Unibrom.  I have had no end of trouble trying to get even development and retain highlight detail and I have pretty much given up on it until I can try out an alternative developer to Fotospeed’s LD20, which is all i have in my stock at the moment.

  Having a few hours free (a rare gift from Jess) to print I made a lith print using some old Agfa Brovira (see previous post).  I had to mix up some fresh standard developer for the test strip so instead of letting that go to waste I decided to try some straight up printing on Unibrom (sacrilege?) using a negative from about a year ago when I went on holiday to Scotland.  The image is of a very small plant that I discovered growing out of a bed of moss on the edge of a forest.  It has good contrast and was well exposed so I thought it would be ideal for seeing what Unibrom can deliver when it comes to straight up printing. 

  I made a test strip, chose an exposure and did a flat print.  It looked good, strong cool blacks and good highlights.  

Ignore the dust etc, my scanner is currently filthy!

   It would need some dodging and burning to get the most out of it though, and i was considering what needed to be done i found my thoughts turning to the lith developer I had just used.  It still had some life left in it so why not try some second pass lith?  I have seen some fine examples of this paper using the second pass method and now seemed like a good opportunity to try it out.  I got out my potassium ferricyanide/bromide bleach, bleached the print all the way back, rinsed it and then put it in the lith developer.  The colours were superb!  The shadows started to build up from a dark coppery red through to a vivid orange before finally cooling off into grey. 

Sorry about the orientation - blogger wont let me rotate the images!

  Unfortunately I pulled the print too late and lost the lovely copper tones in the foreground foliage so I re-bleached it and tried again.  Alas the print solarised (I’m no fan of solarisation) so I made a fresh print and tried again.  Unfortunately it failed this time too.  It is going to take a bit of work to make sure I keep the colour in the foreground at the same time the highlight detail comes in.  That’s something for me to work on in my next darkroom session – maybe only partial bleaching…

Here's the solarised version

   The only drawback I discovered is that once the print goes into the fixer the lovely copper tones disappear and turn into a pale golden yellow – still very pleasing but something of a disappointment after the copper tones.  It's something to keep in mind for future prints though.

The print after the fixing bath.  I need to try and get this lovely colour into the foreground more.  This print is going to take some work i think.

  But still, at least I have found a new use for my supply of Unibrom – it’s a lovely paper and it’s a shame that I can’t seem to get it to work for me with straight lith.  As I mentioned before, perhaps a different developer would serve me better.  Until I can try that out second pass seems to be the order of the day.  I’m looking forward to trying it out with some other negatives, hopefully this weekend.

Lithing Glen Coe

  As I STILL haven’t replaced my broken Bronica SQ-A body I am stuck without a camera.  That being the case I have hardly been in the darkroom at all lately.  I managed to get an evening a few nights ago though and decided to dig through my negative file and see if there was something I missed.  I ended up looking at some rolls I had shot on holiday in Scotland earlier this year.  I had printed most of the good frames from it but there was one frame in particular I just couldn’t get a print I liked from.  It was of some mountains in Glen Coe close to dusk and the shadows were all blocked up.  I was in a rush at the time of exposure so it’s not really the best negative I could have got from the scene, and what’s more there are spots, marks and scratches all over it (bad processing on my part)!  

  I decided that maybe it was time to give it another try.  I went through a few sheets of paper but couldn’t really get anything close to what I liked, and those spots and marks were an annoyance.  I decided to try and lith it and settled on Agfa Brovira as my paper of choice.  With Brovira I can get a good range of tones and it still retains great highlight detail so was ideal for this situation.  Plus with lith marks and spots annoy me much less for some reason, maybe it's because of the gritty nature of hte final print.  

 I mixed up the developer, exposed the paper and slid it into the tray.  It took about 25 minutes to get to an appropriate snatch point, but unlike most of my other prints I pulled it just before the shadows became too dark.  There is shadow detail in this negative that would be lost if I let the blacks fully develop – a road and the texture of the mountainside – and I wanted them to still be discernible in the final print.   

  I’m pleased with the final print, there are patches of a golden yellowy tone that appeared upon drying.  I’m not sure if that’s to do with the lith process or just down to the age of the paper, I like it anyway.  I’m starting to run low on Brovira so I need to start saving it for the most important negatives, or find someone with a huge stash for sale!

  It just goes to show how important it is to keep going back to old negatives as well as printing new ones as your printing skills improve with time and you may be able to get more from your negative than you could when you first tried.

Halfway There

   Finally (after many, many, many sheets) I have got a result I am happy with from Slavich Unibrom in lith developer.  I haven't been out shooting much lately so the majority of my darkroom work has been in revisiting old negatives from the time when all I had was my scanner.  I remembered I had shot a few rolls inside an abandoned power station some time ago using my old Lubitel 166b, one of my main cameras before I bought my Bronica SQ-A.  I thought the decay and dereliction inside the station would work well with a cold, stark lith effect so I decided to give it a try.  If I could get the Unibrom to work then I knew it would give me the look I wanted, the problem was that ever since opening the packet I have been plagued with uneven develolment.

  This time, however, I had a plan.  After a hefty amount of googling I had come accross a few people who had soaked their print in warm water for a minute or so prior to developing.  I decided to give it a try, after all - if it messed up I could just add it to the pile of other failures!

  As it so happens the presoak worked a charm! Development started in the darkest areas of the print as opposed to the edges and continued as with any other lith paper.  I let development continue until an appropriate snatch point was reached.  

  The only problem I am still having is in retaining highlight detail, I just cant seem to get that extra bit needed before the blacks get too dense.  Ah well, keep trying I guess!  At least im getting consistently better results now.  Im looking forward to trying out the unibrom again in my next printing session, perhaps with some second pass lith...

Tapestry

  As usual at the weekend i had a bit of time to myself as Jess was working the morning shift (got to love that morning shift)!  What better way to spend this time than by dabbling in the ancient art of printy?!  I was in a very lith mood so i chose a negative from my latest roll of film and picked a paper.  As mentioned previously i recently won a bulk load of paper on EBay, mostly old Agfa Brovira and Portriga, but i also got a small pack of 8 x 10 Fotospeed Tapestry.  Is it lithable?  Internet says yes as does the good old Facebook lith printing group.  A bit of reading in Lord Rudman's lith and toning books revealed this to be a very special paper.  It liths very well and when toned in selenium a wide range of colours are available.  I got set up and gave it a try... and what a paper!  A lovely textured base with a nice matt finish, it liths fantastically and (as we will go on to see) is phenomenal in Selenium.  This is the print i finally got at the end of the process:

  As you can see it has a very different look to my usual lith prints.  It looks (to me at least) like a watercolour painting.  The colours you can get from this paper in selenium are fantastic, but instead of me talking about it - i have pictures!

  The first print i made of this messed up because i ended up putting finger prints all over the paper.  I decided to use this print to see how far the colour change in selenium would go.  What follows is a series of pictures (taken on my camera phone - sorry for the poor quality of some of them) from 0 to 23 minutes taken every 60 seconds to demonstrate the colour changes.

  Firstly here is the original, untoned print:

Untoned, wet print (note the golden yellow colour - when dry this turned a strong pinkish colour)

30s - note the shadows immediately turning a cool purplish colour

1:30 shadows cooling off further and working up to the lower midtones

2:00

3:00 midtones starting to be affected.  Hints of purple can be seen around the boats cabin

4:00 nice separation in the cabin area and increased separation in the sky

5:00

6:00 purple tones taking over the midtones now and moving up towards the highlights.  The sandy foreground taking on a cooler steely grey tone.

7:00

8:00

9:00 cloud separation reducing slightly as the cooler grey moves towards the purple areas

10:00

11:00

12:00

13:00

14:00 the cool grey now slowly turning into a soft creamy buff colour

15:00 as the creamy colour is taking over cloud separation has reduced significantly

16:00

17:00 shadows have a slight olivey brown tone

18:00

19:00

20:00

21:00

22:00

23:00 the cream has settled into a pale creamy grey colour across the print

  As you can see the print goes through many different colour changes before settling down at around 20 minutes or so.  My plan now was to give an overall toning in selenium to get things going then wash the print and, using a paintbrush, place selenium onto the areas i wanted extra toning on.  I started with the sky so as to increase separation between the purple and yellow areas, then i toned the foreground to change it from the cool grey to a sandy yellow colour.  Then i did a little extra on the cabin and prow of the boat to help it stand out from the frame a little more.  I think the final print looks much better with these multiple pastel colours than it would with just one overall tone.  But maybe that's just me.  One thing that i should mention if you should be lucky enough to come into ownership of this paper is that it dries a different colour.  For exmaple - here is my final print when wet:

And here it is dried out prior to toning:

  As you can see we've gone from yellow to pink.  Not quite what i fancied for this print but maybe one to kkero in mind for another subject.

  I'm sure this "toner painting" could be just as easily applied to any other paper.  You probably won't get as much of an extreme colour shifting but you may get something.  It's certainly something i'll be keeping in mind to try out in the future.

Introducing... Slavich Unibrom!

  During my recent order from my usual photo supply store i got a 25 sheet pack of grade 3 Slavich Unibrom.  This is currently the only true lith paper being made since Foma altered their emulsions some months ago.  Whilst the Foma papers still work in lith they no longer give true infectious development so, alas, do not count anymore... not that i'll stop using them though!

  I had seen from my internet research that Unibrom is a hard paper to tame.  Little did i know!  Normally i can get the print i want first or second try when it comes to lith.  I only just got it on my third try with this paper!  My first print went black very rapidly and my second was way too pale.  The infectious development on this paper is ridiculous!  I am used to developing times of around 20 to 45 minutes when in lith but with Unibrom i was snatching at around 5 minutes!

  The paper itself is lovely.  It has a glossy finish that isn't too in your face but gives a lovely sheen, and with it being double weight it has a nice thickness to it that is a joy to handle.

  Im looking forward to using it some more but ill definitely have to make sure i choose the right subject.  This paper gives a very graphic look, almost like a charcoal sketch that could look horrendous with the wrong negative.  It's definitely going to take some experimenting to get the best from it.

A Slightly Delayed Wedding

  Now i'm no real fan of digital cameras but it does have its uses.  For example-weddings.  Weddings are a massive pain at the best of times, let alone when you add to pressure of photographing them.  Fortunately that's not really something i'm into.  My wife, however, is another matter.  She loves to shoot portraits so when she was asked to shoot a friends wedding she jumped at the chance.  I decided to play at being a second shooter using my trusty Bronica SQ-A and some Tri-X 400.

  The day went really well and everyone had a great time.  Jess got some great photos (and proceeded to spend the next 3 months editing them) and it was nice for me to try something a little different. 

  I developed the films in Rodinal and (as seems to be the norm for me these days) I lith printed a few onto some Orwo BN118.  Here's the three best that I made:

    Jess did a great job with her digital shots as can be seen here (and if you desire a well-priced and very talented photographer for your wedding just drop her an email).

  All in all it was a good day enjoyed by all, and its always nice to see a friend get married.

  

P.S.-Yes that is me in the band that you can see on Jess' blog...