Back to Work

I'm starting to get a feel for printing again. Worked on 3 negatives yesterday, 2 of which turned out ok. The third one I had never printed before, so I was attempting to figure out a correct printing solution. The sky was too dark, and the foreground too flat, so I did not do too well. I probably won't go back to it, the image does not do much for me.

The previous two printing sessions I worked with Forte Polywarmtone paper (no longer available, but I still have an old box), but I remembered that gold toner combined with sepia comes out too heavy with warm tone paper. So I switched to Kentmere Grade 4 cold tone paper, which works very well with the bleach/sepia/rebleach method. Sometimes the gold toner is not even needed because after rebleaching the split tones can be startling and there is no need to go further in tonal change.

I did not get as good a result as hoped for with the rebleach method because the bleach was too fresh and strong, which blasted through the tonal changes too quickly. I made a mental note to use a more diluted bleach solution when working with the cold tone paper on the rebleach side of things. I like to have a strong bleach for the first immersion because the cold tone paper takes too long to pull back if the bleach is weak.

Will be going down to work again this afternoon. It is good to be excited again about making pictures.

Railyard, Winter
Printed 2008

Railyard, Winter Tree
Printed 2008