Al Gore

"But it's on days like this that one would like to go and see some friend or would like a friend to come to the house; and it's on days like this that one has an empty feeling when one can go nowhere and nobody comes. But it's then that I feel how much the work means to me, how it gives tone to life, apart from approval or disapproval; and on days which would otherwise make one melancholy, one is glad to have a will".
Vincent van Gogh, letter 238

Pretty good darkroom/toning session this afternoon. Worked on 8 prints from 3 negatives, about 2 hours work.

I set the tone of the session with the first print of a snowy tree at the railyard. I have some bleach concentrate from a Russian company, and it came with no dilution instructions, so I estimated by placing 2 oz. in a quart of water. When I placed the print in the water it blew away 2/3 of the tree in about 10 seconds. I laughed while getting it out of the bleach as quickly as possible. A normal dilution bleach would take 10 minutes to remove a tree from a picture. One thing I am happy about is that the remaining bleach concentrate should last me a couple of months.

I further diluted the solution, then put the print in a tray of water and brought it outside in the backyard, setting it in a bright spot beneath a cold, wintry sky. I watched as the tones reemerged in a copper/pink tone. Toning with the sun is not only beautiful, but economical.

I wanted the tree to keep some of the copper highlights, but decided to eliminate the coloring in the snow. So I poured a couple of drops of full strength bleach into a ceramic bowl, added a few ounces of water, then applied the bleach to the snow with a watercolor brush.

It improved the picture, but then I had the idea to place the print flat on the wooden painting palette while adding a few drops of bleach to various parts of the tree. I hoped this would increase the contrast between the copper tones and the snow laden branches.

I ended up working on the print for about 20 minutes, which is longer than usual for toning.

Next I worked on the Door County pier print. I had no ideas on how I wanted to tone it, but I felt no pressure to make the perfect print on this day, as I could always make more prints in the future and continue to work on it. I lightly bleached the print, then took it outside and let it absorb the gray, snow-filled light for about 5 minutes. I liked the effect of the sun tone, so I placed the print in the wash, and moved to print no. 2.

Like the first print I lightly bleached it, then placed it on the wooden palette and applied sepia to the sky with a watercolor brush. I then immersed it in almost exhausted gold toner, and after 10 minutes I got a subtle tone shift. After washing the print for a few minutes, I dipped it into Dektol developer. The developer worked on the foreground and middle parts of the picture, not the sky, because sepia closes off the silver. I have discovered that redeveloping in Dektol after a dip into gold produces a warm orange tone in the bleached parts of the picture (normally redeveloping with Dektol after bleach produces a cold blue/black tone).

This version looked ok, so I put into the wash. I worked the remaining 2 pier prints in ways which I cannot now remember, but they also looked pretty good.

After washing the prints I placed them on the drying screens, but then had the idea that a dip in selenium would enhance the lower left shadow area, so I placed 2 of the pier prints into selenium and it increased the luminosity and shadow density, so it seemed to be an improvement.

I finally placed the prints to rest on the screens and turned off the lights....

Monkey Bowl :