The first person that talked to me about resins coat on inkjet print on drawing paper was Marco Tardito (whom I also made an interview).

In the past I also tried myself printing on watercolor paper with my Epson 2100, but the results were terribly disappointing. Colors are completely wrong because standard profiles doesn’t work on artistic paper and black are almost grey, therefore the contrast is strongly flattened.

If the first problem is kind of easy to be solved, you just need a calibration device that creates custom icc profiles, the black problem is more complex. At its basis there’s a problem of excessive absorbing of the ink from the paper, expanding in its fibers and giving back flat and without blacks images. The ideal solution would be covering the background of the paper with a layer of some material that doesn’t allow the penetration of the ink. Well, in practice the paper for inkjet printer should be created at home. More than all of the sizing techniques, there are also pre-prepared products, such as Inkaid, a sort of paint which I was talked by Dorothy Simpson Krause in her interview and that, at least the producers say it, allows to print on each support.

It is a pity. Using fine arts papers is a very attractive idea. In general those papers are much more beautiful than the one for inkjet print and there is also an enormous, almost infinite variety with different characteristics available.

Inkjet print on Graphia paper. Let’s notice the contrast loss of the image.

I then got in touch with Marco Tardito and I was talked about a second possibility, that is painting after printing. After some time he brought to me in Paris some wonderful prints of still life (wonderful pictures as well) on paper like Rives BFK, heavy and textured, which means sponge for ink. Although this, black were the most lucid and deep ever, the prints brilliant and contrasted. A thick layer of transparent paint covered the surface, as some millimeters of plastic resin would have been poured on it (actually, the layer was thinner, but that was the impression). The irregular surface united the beauty of the paper with the beauty of hand-made objects. The only problem, in my opinion, was the horrible synthetic smell and an interrogative point on the print conservation in time.

Marco Tardito confessed me about his countless tests on paper and resin to find the right combination, therefore I tried myself. Seen the results, I’m far away from Marco’s wonderful prints, but I learned a lot about resins and paints anyway. Recently I’m mostly worried about photography and work than print testing, but who knows maybe one day I will take printing on watercolor paper more seriously.

Prints have been made on Graphia paper, an amazing, not too expensive, white and smooth Sicilian paper. Testing is not rigorous as usual. I just printed 5 or 6 different images and painted each one using 3 different resins: from acrylic to Arabic gum and a polyurethan paint. The followings are some notes about the experiments and the scanning of one of the images of the series. Scansions are particularly to execute, results should better be judged in person. Pictures are only reported as guide.

Acrylic

Acrylic painted print. White stains are the residuals of another print sticked on it.

Acrylic must be watered down, as it facilitates the preparation to every dilution. The solution has the aspect of a white viscous liquid, as a sort of vinavil diluted. It smells like ammoniac, but not so intensively. The seller told me that it doesn’t yellow, even after long periods; after two months I still don’t notice any kind of change. Half a litre costs almost 8 euros.

The acrylic, used directly at the original concentration, is really dense and thicken rapidly . It is much easier to coat the print when it is diluted one to one with water, but I’m still unable to make an even surface, without the brush streaks. Even with a dried, soft brush to smoothen the harshness, after the first coarse application (imitating the smoothing technique of the bichromate gum) it is hard to brush in a very uniform manner. When wet, the brushstrokes are white therefore particularly evident into the shadows; when it dries, they become transparent. The surface of the print keeps on being striped, evident if watching the print with a grazing light.

Probably acrylic should be diluted more and more to be scoated in an efficient manner or it must be sprayed with an airbrush. Anyway the seller told me that the less the acrylic is diluted, the more the acrylic is diluted the less the print is brilliant. Brilliance should be recovered superimposing more layers of acrylic. In this last case, we must verify that the successive layers will not soften and take away the past ones.

In about 30 minutes the print will dry, but if acrylic were working as all of the resins I used in the past, it would be better to wait some hours before the second coat.

The surface, even with some stripes of the brush, is homogeneous, in the sense that the stripes are regular and the effect can be lovable. The print is lucid and brilliant, such as the Arabic gum or the polyurethane, but I’d say blacks are less deep.

After some days, I put the prints one on the other and I put some weight on the top to flat them. All of the acrylic painted prints adhere one to each other; this never happened with Arabic gum or polyurethane. When I divided them, the part behind stuck on the picture behind. There’s no crease.

Arabic Gum

Inkjet print covered by Arabic gum.

Arabic gum can be solved on water as well, and this allows all kind of desired solutions. It is a sort of yellowish transparent liquid, characteristic that should warm the tints of the prints. The gum is practically without smell; the soft aroma is pleasant and natural, remembers about craftsmanship stores. A bottle from 1 liter up to 14 degrees baume costs less than 10 euros, turning the Arabic gum into the cheapest resin between the ones I tried.

I tried it directly without any kind of dilution, as all of my attempts with gum prints, knowing it would have been too thick. It is easy to paint with; the aspect of the humid print is lucid and nice. As far as it dries though, micro-bubbles born because of the paper absorbance, micro-bubble that can’t run away because the solution is too dense, making the picture surface irregular.

Probably this problem wouldn’t exist if Arabic gum were more diluted. Another attempt could be adding some ethylic alcohol, as in the preparation of paper for carbon prints it sensibly reduces the presence of bubbles. Superimposition creates same doubts of the acrylic; I didn’t verify if other layers remove the precedents. Arabic gum could be hardened with a little addition of potassium dichromate, making it completely insoluble. The problem is that dichromate leaves a green dominant in the gum and is very toxic, therefore I rather renounce. It is useless to use gum, a natural product, when you put a highly toxic and carcinogen substance in it.

Even after a couple of months, the surface of the print is gluey if touched, but it doesn’t seem like dripping or sticking like acrylic, which is perfectly dried when handled.

The surface, from perfectly smooth, has been covered with cracks that follow the sense of the paper fibers. Although this, the effect is still delightful.

In the complex, this is the resin I prefer: no smell, natural ingredient, brilliant and deep blacks, kind of easy to spread out, centenary photographic tradition that confirm its stability during time. But most of all, looking at the pictures, it is the one that I prefer.

Polyurethane

Inkjet print with one layer of polyurethane paint. Let’s notice the irregular surface of the print and the yellow borders.

This paint is solvable with a classic industrial solvent, not water. It is in fact greasy to the touch. Though its transparency, it has a slightly purplish color. It has an intense and unpleasant smell typical of solvents. I bought the cheapest paint I found in a DIY shop, but the price is 9 euros for 250 ml, the most expensive between the three resins I tried.

The polyurethane paint rapidly penetrates the paper. Even a large quantity is quickly absorbed. The humid paper is the most brilliant, but when it dries the surface becomes opaque. Its drawing up is easy and uniform, even with a hard brush. If, with some layers of paint, I could create the right surface that will not be absorbed, this would be the perfect resin.

Unfortunately, once the surface dries, it becomes irregular, in some zone is matte and in some others lucid. Blacks are actually deeper but the surface is very rough.

After only two months the polyurethane layer turned visibly yellow.

A couple of years ago, while I was traveling by car in the south of Italy, I was talking with a friend from Naples, photographer himself, about alternative print techniques. In particular, I was talking about superimposing brown prints, or Van Dyke brown, to cyanotype prints.

The answer was quick and laconic:

– Blue and brown is not allowed! (NT: in Italian the rhyme goes with a word that means rude, boor)

There’s also the twin proverb to complete the opera: “black and brown never allowed”.

In reality, superimposing iron salts brown print on cyanotype is a technique, as every technique, that could be interesting, mostly when printing the hardest negatives or to recover bad VDB prints. This phrase could be rude, but actually in alternative techniques world it is better to let yourself go, letting destiny play its trickeries, leaving space to serendipity and accepting what fate will give to you. Those who work with this kind of prints are used to it to discover an alternative look, produce different images to the ones we’re used to, create unique prints. This is the reason why there’s nothing better than case or, if we want, chaos.

This is the reason why, in general, I suggest the apprentices of alternative techniques not to throw away anything, not even the worst print; it could become an interesting element to (re-) work on. New techniques, combinations and possibilities are discovered every day and that bad platinum once thrown away could be the perfect one to test the new learned technique.

The technical advantage when superimposing cyanotype and VDB is that the first technique requires a softer negative than the second one. Which means that with a hard negative some tones can be covered with the blue of the cyanotype, some others with the brown of the VDB print. As the colors are completely different, dualtone, posterization and solarization are often interesting results.

It is possible to print cyanotype before and VDB after, or inverting the order. In the second case though, as the classical cyanotype formula contains potassium ferrocyanide, an ingredient used in many formulas to reduce the density of images and negatives overexposed or over developed, the silver image of the VDB print is largely damaged when the cyanotype solution has to be coated. Even printing a cyanotype before and a VDB after, the first print is a little corroded by the second coating, but the effect is contained and the results are interesting.

As VDB has harder negatives, the maybe fair high lights of the cyanotype prints are pleasantly filled up by the ferric salt print, creating a particular dualtone effect. The cyanotype blue will be desaturated in the presence of brown, turning it darker and more neuter, thing that I personally find more pleasant than the brilliant color of the direct cyanotype prints.

The picture inside this article has been shot in occasion of the Festa della Madonna dell’Avvocata, when the majority of the inhabitants of a couple of villages in the Amalfi coast goes up to the sanctuary and pass their entire day dancing the local tammuriata (NT: a typical style of music from the south of Italy). I shot this picture with an old mechanic OM-2, charged with FP4 Plus, Inter-positive on RC paper and negative enlarged on Adox film. Unfortunately the negative was too hard and I had to soften it with Dupont 4-R, Ederís harmonizing reducer. I printed a couple of cyan before soften it, among those the one I’m talking about, on the backside of an Arche Platine sheet where a couple of years ago I had already printed something with bichromate gum. As the negative was too hard, I superimposed a VDB print using the same negative. The cyanotype remains in shadows while VDB fills affably up the middle tones of the image. The cyanotype emerges inside the faces, underlining the visage characteristics. There’s still something missing in lights that I will fix when I’ll have some time and desire, adding another couple of bichromate gum layers to enrich the lights and let everything compenetrate.

In any case, something born as error could turn into interesting images. Even if some time can also be rude…

The research of the perfect technique, from the deepest black, to the larger gamut, to the most defined detail, but even to the most expressive and original picture, turns sometime photography into a boring and repetitive job, converting the shooting into some more and more formal and disconnected tests that aim to the original objective of this occupation: creativity.

Sometime I feel like I need to go back to the ludic aspect of photography, that sensation that lets you freely create, the pleasure of entering a dark room to experiment and play. When the last months have been spent testing if that particular sizing for platinum better lighten the image, trying to complete that series of images for a certain portfolio or repeating again and again the calibration procedure on digital negatives… well, I swear that abandon for one day seriousness and discipline makes you feel the pure pleasure of photography.

Three pictures of palaces from the “Esplanade des Olympiades” in Paris, 2007. Color prints from black-and-white negatives. Each picture size is: 18x24cm on satin Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper

The other day I had the possibility to play a little with color prints. I took back from my closet an old RA-4 kit of the 90’s and a box of color paper that I bought some years ago, and used with scarce success. I then printed some black-and-white pictures, to obtain monochromatic pictures. The huge advantage in contrast to toning is that every color can be easily obtained. You do not only have the choice of the picture tint, but also you can choose every kind of saturation, from neutral images up to deepest colors that every kind of paper can give in return.

The first trouble is that color negatives have a mask absent on black-and-white negatives. Literature suggests interposing a non-exposed film color but developed in the optical path of the enlarger, or an 85B orange filter. As I didn’t have both of them, I thought I could print on a Agfa Copyjet film a square similar in color to the mask. Apart from the difficulty in determine the precise color, once positioned the handcrafted filter on the enlarger I had an unpleasant surprise. When interposed between negative and paper, the image is completely blurred, unless printing a big filter and positioning it in perfect contact with the paper. When the hand made filter is positioned between the light and the negative, the results are curious halos on the print. The material practically interacts in a too strong manner with the light and I had to renounce.

Agfa Copyjet film (with a colored background filter printed with an Epson 2100) used as filter between light and negative gives back curious reflexes on the print.

Cyan, magenta and yellow filters used without the mask to color the base e b&w film, have a reduced impact on the color of the print. Therefore I used contrast filters on an other enlarger head for black-and-white prints, which efficaciously color the light. This way it is harder to obtain the exact desired color, as it is easier to resonate using the Maxwell triangle: the three primary colors of additive synthesis (red, green and blue) at the top of the triangle and the three complementary colors of subtractive synthesis (cyan, magenta and yellow) on the borders of the triangle. So, if you want to obtain a redder print, you would just augment the filter of the opposite color, the cyan. In the same way, if you want a more yellow print, you would just diminish the yellow filter or contemporary augment cyan and magenta.

Gust of sea in Cabo Polonio (Uruguay), 2007. Color prints from black-and-white negatives. Size: 18×24 on satin Fujicolor Crystal Archive.

Using contrast filters instead of color filters, this simple procedure partially fails and the obtained colors are the one you must focus on. They give an interesting effect anyway.

I noticed that prints looses a lot of contrast compared to ones obtained on black-and-white paper, at least with the materials I used. Negatives with high-density range, adapted to Van Dyke Brown prints, can be correctly printed, while the ones for silver chloro-bromides print without blacks and without whites. At the same time, images are pleasant, most of all when dark printed, and this is my personal taste.

Obviously, Photoshop is one click far away from the work explained in those pages… but craftsmanship would be loss, and this was the principal intent of the article.

Historical note on carbon print

At the beginning photography produced unstable images. Just think about the first pictures printed on salted paper by Fox Talbot since 1841, when there wasn’t an adequate fixing bath yet. Later on, numerous processes were activated, such as protective gold or selenium toning, that still are in use today to preserve analogical pictures. But stability in time still was the weak point of photography.

Palladium or platinum print and carbon print were two of the most stable and beautiful techniques of the entire history of photography that the researches for the problem we talked before found.

Even if the first carbon print patent date back to 1855, the image only contained shadows, lights were completely washed away. After the well-known remarque de Fargier about the hardening deepness of the gelatin and the invention during the following years of the image transfer, the carbon print technique was patented in 1865 by Joseph W. Swan, under the form we still use nowadays.

The prints obtained with this method solved the problem of the stability and moreover had an extraordinary fine and defined image. Amazing when one thinks that they were produced only with animal gelatin and powdered carbon.

Therefore, the carbon print knew a great success and was considered more and more the best technique print ever. It has been largely used till the fifties, when its industrial production stopped completely. Today, printing with this technique means build all the material with your own hands, and unfortunately the complexity of the procedure limits its diffusion.

Characteristics of the carbon print

Carbon prints are absolutely the most stable. They’re not made of a metallic deposit, which can be attacked or oxidized, but made of a pigment, simple carbon dust at its origin, watercolor or tempera nowadays. Those pigments derive from some kind of grounds and therefore are completely inactive. Photography history has less than a couple of centuries and all the questions about the conservation of the image on the really long term are still open. Antique paintings and cave art survived through millenniums, so carbon prints, manufactured with the same ingredients and pigments, should have long life.

Apart from its great stability, carbon prints are characterized by an excellent gamut, rich and long, and by the sensation of presence that turn it into unique productions. This is due to three reasons:

1. All of the great silver chloro-bromides fiber paper printers know that the glossy paper valorizes shadows and produces more intense blacks. At the same time though, high, finer and more delicate lights can be obtained only on matte paper. Carbon print is brilliant in shadows and opaque in lights, for that reason it is possible to obtain the best result for the entire gamut.
2. The print is not constituted by a metallic depot (silver, platinum, etc) that penetrates into the fibers of the paper, but by a pigmented, more or less thick gelatin layer fixed on the paper. This augments the micro-contrast and gives the sensation that the picture “comes out” of the paper.
3. The sensation of a three-dimensional presence is augmented by the fact that the surface of the print is not smooth. The gelatin layer is more thick in shadows and finer in lights. This difference of thickness can be more than 0.3 millimeters and it is perceivable to the naked eye.

Almost a century and a half after its invention, all of the characteristics we talked about before made this technique the best one ever.

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Technical description of the carbon print

Carbon print is a slow and complex process that requires preparation, dedication and strictness. Moreover, as everything is about gelatin consistency and its power of water absorbance, consistent results arrive only when dark room temperature and humidity are strictly controlled. It is necessary also to control the temperature of every single bath used, with an incertitude generally smaller than 1°C, knowing that different temperatures are necessary for each step of the printing. The choice of the materials is important as well, as the details of the procedure itself.

I will also give a describing introduction to carbon print. An interested reader could consult the bibliography at the end of the page or participate to a stage of formation.

The final support on which the print will be reported is called “transport paper”. It must be prepared, or sized, with a uniform layer of gelatin whose characteristics such as thickness, bloom degree (the measure of the gelatin hardness), hardening and so on are essential for the final result. The gelatin used for sizing also contains formaldehyde, which disinfects the organic material used in the process, but most of all harden the gelatin layer. This solidification is not immediate; therefore it is necessary to size the paper some days before passing to the real print.

In the successive days the “carbon tissue” can be prepared; this is the support on which the pigmented gelatin will be dripped, and will be exposed and transferred on the transport paper.

The choice of the used material as base for the carbon tissue plays a big role on the final result. The pigmented gelatin is prepared mixing a pigment with sugar, glycerin, alcohol and naturally gelatin. The characteristics of this last ingredient, once again, are very important for this final result. All the other ingredients, whose use is still debated, are useful to make the gelatin an elastic substance, control its humidity degree, avoid the formation of bubbles and so on. This gelatin solution, prepared with care, is stretched out on the carbon tissue support, to obtain a uniform layer, without defects, bubbles, deposit of pigments, etc…

The preparation of a good quality carbon tissue is the most difficult part of the carbon print.

Once the carbon tissue is dried (24-48 hours), it is sensitized in an ammonium (or potassium) bi-chromed solution, which is the salt sensible to light, and ammonia, which is useful to control the penetration of the chromo salt inside the gelatin layer and the mechanical properties of this last one. The sensible paper is dried in dark for a determined time and then exposed to contact (that is the negative has the final image dimension) using an ultraviolet light source.

During the exposition of the carbon tissue the transport paper must be soaked, because the transfer of the image from one to another is possible only thanks to an exchange of humidity between the layers of gelatin. Once the exposition is over, the carbon tissue is quickly immerged in a basin of water and put in contact with transport paper, handle to eliminate all the bubbles of air and obtain a perfect contact between the supports. Once they are out of the water, they are put under a press.

Both papers are put back in hot water. After a couple of minutes it is possible to detach the carbon tissue from the transport paper. And here’s start the development and cleaning phase. It is necessary to continuously shake the basins to detach the gelatin that didn’t hardened during the exposition. In this phase the image finally starts to appear. The development is complete once that, suspending the paper out of the water, there’s no more run-off pigment on the white borders of the print. The developing time can’t be extended as much as one likes (apart from the use of colder water), because after ten minutes gases can form in paper and they can cause the detachment of the gelatin or blistering (micro bubbles). To avoid those problems, once the development has been obtained correctly, the print must be immerged in a basin of cold water that stops completely the developing phase. Then the paper and the borders must be cleaned.

When the paper is dried, the image must be treated in a sodium metabisulfite bath that eliminates every single trace of dichromate. After a last drying, there’s the final spotting of the print.

All these efforts will be rewarded by magnificent of carbon prints, one of the most beautiful techniques invented during the entire history of the photography.

Bibliography

The reader interested to those arguments should read Les procèdès au charbon, by Monckhoven, Lièbert, Colson, Tranchant, Schneeberger, Jean Michel Place editions.

Damiano Bianca wrote a good article: “la stampa al carbone, il mito” from which the majority of the information in this article are obtained. Damiano Bianca also organizes carbon print courses and offers a precious carbon print service.

All the images of the “I demoni” series are shot with a catadioptric objective, a lens gifted with a particular bokeh, that gives a particular out-of-focus. In fact, even if the out-of-focus is intense, the objects have an important spatial structure, as it was a superimposition of the different images. The sign of the catadioptric objective is occasionally visible in those little rings superimposed to the image, partial or complete, which are the luminous marks of points deformed by the ring diaphragm of the objective.

Pictures are voluntarily out-of-focus to exploit this category of mirrored objectives and are voluntarily under-exposed to obtain a dark and gloomy atmosphere.

The subjects of the series are the sculptures of the grotesque masks of the Pont Neuf in Paris. They should have been primarily on the Germain Pilon (1528?-1590) and they were often substituted during the centuries due to the stone decay.

Even if the shot has been taken digital, the editing of the image is limited to current intervention under the enlarger: contrast managing, vignetting, Dodging and burning.

The passage from digital to traditional carbon print happens thanks to the usage of an ink jet negative, a modern and still experimental technique, which allows the closure of the circle between a technology born at the beginning of photography history and the most advanced technology available today.

Prints are realized by Damiano Bianca, one of the best Italian carbon printer.

The support is Fabriano Artistico traditional white 300g/m2 paper, hot pressed, therefore satin surface, essential for the velvety giveback researched in the series of i demoni. The absence of chemical whitening agents, which gives the pleasant warm tone of paper, as well as the absence of chlorine and acids together with 100% cotton fibers, makes Fabriano Artistico traditional white a beautiful paper with an excellent conservation in time.

Watercolor (finer and better quality than tempera) used to print are a mixture of two colors. The basis is carbon black, probably the first pigment of the human history and the nearest to vintage carbon print. It is an almost neutral black, gifted of an excellent stability. It is not attacked by light either by acids or alkali. The second ingredient is Payne grey, a mixture of black and blue (a mixture of Prussian blue or ultramarine and ivory black, with a little hint of red). Once again its stability is outstanding, as it is created only with natural clays. It has been used for i demoni carbon prints, because it is a cold grey, which allows to counterbalance the warm tint of the used paper. Cold prints are generally more contrasted in shadows; since i demoni are dark pictures, it is essential not to use warm pigments.

It is possible to buy Mascarons du Pont Neuf carbon prints at the gallery http://chambre-avec-vues.com.

All of the cyanotype toning formulas that I tried, completely bleaching the image in an alkali and re-developing it in a tanning agent for a long time, gave red-browned flat hues with a little dmax. I always obtained best results with long tanning bathes and a quick immersion in a diluted alkali, which gave a print with warm grey, brown or pink lights, while shadows are intense blue, slightly violet or black. A part of the original blue of the cyanotype is conserved in the final print, giving not only a cold hue to shadows, but also keeping relatively high the dmax, penalized by a complete alkaline whitening.

I think this is cyanotype toning big deal. The contrast drop in the middle tones can be corrected applying the right curve, the flattening of the high lights often creates a delicate effect of softness and lightness; but the loss of shadow density is a problem that still doesn’t have a solution. Certain images work even without blacks, all played on pastel colors, but others need the strength of intense and deep shadows.

Toning formulas that promise deep blacks, neutral lights and no paper dyeing (such as tea or concentrated tannic acid) are found in literature. In general they are variants of the procedure described at the beginning: alkali and tanning. The order of baths, the repetition or not of the successive immersions, ph control, intermediate washings and the tanning or/and alkali nature are the changeable elements. Those variations have a strong impact on final return, but they always have the same denominator: flatness of hues and dmax reduction. But I’m still searching for the magical combination that intensify a cyanotype rather than reducing it, turning the print into a palladium image infinitely less expensive.

Serendipity against severity

Moloch. Dualtone cyanotype: 30″ bleach 1%, acetic acid 0.1%, 5′ tannic acid1%, 5′ acetic acid 0.1%. Fabriano Paper 50, 25x35cm; image dimension: 18x27cm.

Yesterday night I made some attempts with some formulas. As usual, I didn’t follow a scientific method but a creative one, letting creativity and fate play their role. I tried in the past to formalize with strictness dark room tests, but I always failed. The thing is that some of the variables are hard to control, as temperature and environment humidity. Paper characteristics change from one stock to another and little variations are amplified. Moreover, because of the never-ending number of dissimilarities, it is required an infinite patience. It would be necessary to made them change one of a time, so I’d need thousands and thousands of tests and dark room days. Obviously, only printing Stouffer palettes to have the maximum rigor and the best ease of interpretation. This way, no image will be printed and life will be spent in taking boring tests. I’m sorry, but I’m a photographer and I’m not a lab technician. Life’s too short and all of the pictures I don’t take are images lost forever.

In certain cases I rather let variables evolve and print in an intuitive, not rigorous manner. Serendipity is a gift useful as much as meticulousness, while studying alternative techniques. By the way, a similar approach is found in many other areas. A sailboat can be managed because it gives back equilibrium; controlling every detail in a so difficult system or writing motion equations would be impossible.

Cyanotype toning material

Aamon. Cyanotype toning: 5′ tannic acid 1%, 5′ ammonia 1%, 5′ acetic acid 0,1%. Dark points are inside the negative and do not depend from toning. Rives BFK Paper, 28x38cm. Image dimension 18x26cm.

I therefore used a digital negative with color and curve adapted to carbon print. Cyanotype requires a lower difference of density, which means that images printed with those negatives will have completely posterized and white light, a strong contrast and a marked grain. In this case, those defects are not frustrating. I can see how toning behave with completely white lights in zones that didn’t receive any exposition. Too high contrast compensates the toning flatness. Image grain can be amplified or reduced during the process, and this is interesting information too.

I used daemon pictures, the Mascarons du Pont Neuf of Paris, because their negatives have many transparent parts, so I do have large zones in prints where blue is the deepest I can obtain on cyanotypes. Negatives are exposed for 12 minutes, the reference exposition timing, that in my case gave the deepest blue I can achieve. A higher exposition blends shadows without augmenting dmax.

It is recycle paper, and those are the variables that I deliberately choose not to control. It is the back of some not successful gum prints, VDB or cyanotypes. It is a paper that already went under chemical and mechanical treatments. Some sheets are sized to gelatine and some no. Brands are from Arche Platine, Fabriano Artistico, Fabriano 50, Rives BFK, Canson “C” grain. Some cyanotypes, before toning, have been left for some days oxidizing, to obtain a definitive color, some other only a few hours.

Tannic acid is an old 1994 package. In every case, due to past experiences, I still haven’t seen big differences between tannic acid concentration and solution (except for the paper hue due to tea). So I’d say that the active ingredient is still quite functioning.

Kai Hamman cyanotype toning

Moloch. Complete cyanotype toning: 5′ ammonia 1%, 1′ acetic acid 0.1%, 5′ tannic acid 1%, 5′ acetic acid 0.1%. Bubble stains were present on paper even before printing the cyanotype and they do not depend from toning. Fabriano Paper Rives BFK, 28x38cm; image dimension: 17x26cm.

Kai Hamann published a toning procedure whom results, if not modified during scanning, are extremely astonishing. The reported examples have a pink hue that I easily recognize, some other are perfectly neutral, but most of all shadows have an intense and deep black, as far as in video some prints seem palladium ones or perfect Van Dyke Browns.

Resuming the procedure described on his site, Kai Hammann toning is the following: acetic acid 1%, water washing, ammonia 0,5% between 1 and 16 minutes depending on the required hue, water washing, acetic acid 1%, water washing, tannic acid 1% for some minutes, acetic acid washing 1%. At that time he suggests a method to control the final hue of the print, adding one more softly alkali bath after the last washing, but I didn’t explore this way because the last acid bath in Kai Hamann’s table seem having the most cold and neutral hues, whose I’m interested in.

Carrying out the procedure to the letter gave wonderful results, often with beautiful hues, but it was still impossible to obtain a black print and contain the dmax loss. Bleaching the image with ammonia gave prints with pink-browned lights and vaguely neutral shadows, something like black-purplish but absolutely not deep. Bleaching only a part of prints for some seconds, I obtain a familiar effect of warm gray high lights and purplish blue shadows, but even in this case I lose dmax.

Therefore the proposed toning technique doesn’t work for me. I do not know if it is due to the ammonia or tannic acid quality, water or –more probably- cyanotype formula and composition (ammoniacal ferric citrate is a bad defined compound and it varies from package to package).

Interesting collateral and useful information –long live serendipity!- is that the use of acetic acid bath, even if diluted, for example 0.1%, between alkali and tannic, sensibly preserves the bath itself from contamination. Bathing even only one picture directly from an alkalic bath to tannic acid turns this last into a brown compound and easily gets the paper dirty. In two or three images the tannic solution is practically useless. Even an intermediate water bath easily contaminates the tannic acid and the washing bath becomes toning itself, therefore it must be regularly changed. Acetic acid bath gets less dirty and most of all allowed the usage of tannic acid during the entire session without any visible alteration.

Support for hydrochloric acid cyanotype

Hydrochloric acid is often cited as cyanotype support. It is said to augment blue dmax, giving a darker and deeper hue to shadows, almost black, but also providing neutral middle tones, such as metallic grey. I found indications on its use as first developing bath (I use very diluted acetic acid or water) or toning-support.

I tried this last procedure, immersing a washed and dried cyanotype in a hydrochloric acid 2% solution for 20’, but the color hasn’t changed at all and the dmax absolutely hasn’t augmented.

I don’t want to try higher concentrations, because hydrochloric acid, more than dangerous, gets paper fibers fragile. I still have to verify if hydrochloric acid as development bath achieve the described results. I wouldn’t be willing to use concentrated acid anyway, since some sources cite the possibility of expansion for cyanide gases when a not perfectly washed cyanotype is bathed in an acid.

Paper developer as alkali in cyanotype toning

Some sources cites ammonia and tannic acid toning as “red brown”, while giving a toning formula of “grey black” that uses a paper developer as alkali bath instead of ammonia or sodium carbonate. I tried this combination too, using a new diluted developer 1+9.

I was expecting a hue slightly different from the ammonia one, not to hope in dmax miracles. I actually obtained wonderful purplish hues, most of all in the tannic acid combinations, some seconds inside the developer and then tannic acid again, but it is absolutely impossible to obtain black cyanotypes without dmax loss during toning.

Black cyanotype is still far away

All of the described cyanotype toning techniques makes splendid results, particular and unique images, delicate hues, optimal gum prints backgrounds, etc… No one that I tried, at least in my case, is able to produce a black toning, intensification or at least a limited dmax loss, which happens every time I tone a cyanotype. A hydrochloric acid bath particularly seems not to influence a washed and dried cyanotype.

Collateral information, a useful forethought consists in using acetic acid baths between alkali and tannic acid to preserve this last solution, sensibly augmenting its life.

The majority of cyanotype tonings use two baths: a tanning agent as tea, coffee or, obviously, the tannic acid itself and an alkali, usually sodium carbonate. Their order can be inverted, with or without washing before and between the two baths, in different concentrations… all of the combinations give give quite different effects. It is also possible to repeat toning, for example tanning-alkali-tanning.

Possibilities are never-ending.

Ammonia as basic bath is an alternative to calcium carbonate that is often cited in literature. Yesterday night I made some preliminary tests using a 13% ammonia solution bought from the grocer store and the discount soluble coffee. All of the prints were discards on which make tests, too contrasted pictures, overexposed, with stains or too much pixelated. I used them just to familiarize with the procedure.

I tried some baths using 40ml, 20ml and 10ml of 13% diluted ammonia in a liter of water. As the color changed rapidly, I choose the 10ml per liter solution and it is probably possible to use a smaller concentration. Besides, if you want to completely bleach the image, it is better to use 40ml.

Lonesome ammonia in cyanotype tonings

The two-second diluted ammonia bath gives a beautiful purplish color, which loses significantly density during the water washing. If the print is dried without washing, the hue gets lost during the drying. It only remains a slight purple and cold tonality that is more pleasurable than the brilliant not toned blue cyanotype, but the bath reduces the dmax and flattens the tones at the same time. I don’t like this result at all! And don’t forget the preservation and stability problems described in the following paragraphs.

When used to bleach a cyanotype, ammonia behaves as a linear reducer, which means that it turns down the density of the entire print, both of shadows and lights. Its final hue is dark blue, more pleasurable than the one obtained bleaching into peroxide, which produces a greenish unpleasant dominant.

In any case, bleaching without redeveloping in a tanning agent is something to be avoided, because this procedure transforms the prussian blue in ferric hydroxide, which is unstable. Only tanning can guarantee a correct preservation of the images. In fact, as already said in basicity and color of blue prints, cyanotype tonings are stable even when time goes by because tanning agents transform again ferric hydroxide in ferrotannic (or ferrogallic) compounds. They are extremely stable compounds, used for ink of hand-copied books that past through centuries without paling.

Tea or coffee in cyanotype tonings

After bleaching a print, I put it in a bath with 50g of soluble coffee and 500ml of water, but unfortunately this last didn’t put on density. Notwithstanding the image is delicate and pleasurable, almost transparent, neutral grey with a slightly blue dominant in deepest shadows.

Writer Gudrun Mebs portrait. Split-tone cyanotype colored by tea and toned for some seconds in an ammonia bath. Dimension: 31x22cm.

I only hope coffee would have been enough to convert the biggest part of the ferric hydroxide, in a way that the image doesn’t significantly change in time.

The coffee bath didn’t work for any image, even in short ammonia bath or long coffee bath (I left one image the entire night inside the bath and it only turned a little brown hue, moreover maculated. Advantage: it now has a wonderful coffee scent!).

Maybe the bath concentration must be augmented, even if coffee was completely black. I though, after buying the package, noticed that it only have 40% coffee and the rest additives, so maybe it is necessary a real coffee.

I then worked with the tea bath: 4 tea bags in boiling water.

The best result of the entire session came with a 3-minutes tea bath followed by 2/3-seconds quick immersion inside the ammonia bath. The print gets a pleasing split-tone effect, dark blue shadows and warm grey vaguely pink lights.

Na2CO3 comparison and gelatine tanning in cyanotype toning

Using tea and sodium carbonate instead of ammonia turns hue into more brown and yellow color. Pure tannic acid and sodium carbonate have high pink lights, almost unpleasant, but some wonderful black shadows. Tea and ammonia instead are between the two, lights of a neutral grey, pink and brown that I found genuinely nice and dark blue shadows.

Tea effect on a paper sized with gelatine. From the bottom you can see the white reference of the scanner, the tea colored paper, the brown tanned gelatine, the cyanotype black border, the image.

A collateral effect of the experiments is the toning effect on gelatine-sized paper. In fact, one of the prints was only-shadows cyanotype base on Rives BFK. I wanted to put on it bichromed gums that but I never did it, so the paper was sized after the cyanotype print with a 5% hardened in formaldehyde gelatine solution. The gelatine is strongly tanned by tea, turning in a browned-pink pronounced color. If you want to tone a cyanotype print as a bichromed gum base and if you want to obtain some pure whites, toning must be done before sizing. On the contrary, you can size a print before toning if you want to amplify the tea color on paper.

Tanning acidification in cyanotype toning

Some forum recommend to slightly acidify tannates bath, some other suggest an acid bath to rapidly stop the toning effect. Those advices are contradictory, so I tried to add a drop of acetic acid to tea, to verify how a cyanotype behaves in an acid-tanning bath. Tea suddenly got clear, passing from dark brown to light brown, but stopped functioning. Prints inside acid cyanotype simply didn’t tone.

I therefore think that an acid bath is more useful as tanning arrest than as tanning additive.

The majority of the alternative techniques and historical processes are not so sensible to light and it is therefore impossible to use an enlarger as on traditional fiber paper prints. Negatives are printed with contact print technique.

If there’s even a minimum space between paper and negative, it could be the littlest – it doesn’t matter, the final image – at best- won’t have the finest details and the micro-contrast, will be blurry and soft. When the space augments, there will be completely blurred zones, particularly bothersome and impossible to hide.

This happens when printing on papers that tend to whiten and undulate a lot. They have depressions where negative is detached from paper that are translated as regular bands, alternatively flou or clean. That’s the reason why one of the most useful characteristics of a certain type of paper is flatness even when wet. A wonderful cyanotype paper, Shoeller durex, is practically unusable because of this problem. Before the choice of the support, it is appropriated to verify that our paper will be smooth even when sensitized.

The real solution for this problem is using a a high pressure printing frame. This way, all the depressions of the paper are completely pressed against the negative, the contact is complete on the entire image surface and prints are perfects in every point.

The printer often follows the developing phase or the development of a gum bichromate print with few agitation and no interventions, and it is therefore called passive development. This is the most photographic form of the developing phase for the gum, the one that keeps the finest details of the print, that doesn’t present visible external intrusions, that has the less pictorial aspect.

As the immobility of the development bath, you must pay attention not to form or leave trapped air bubbles under the paper. In this case water is no more in contact with the print and less developed zones carve out. It’s easy recognizing those types of imperfections from other halos or similar defaults, as in the case of bubbles, the stains are perfectly circular and have defined borders.

That’s the reason why they’re so irritating, as the definite border prevents a local development that doesn’t differentiate from the final print. The only solution is to eliminate the entire gum layer and start over.

To avoid that it is necessary, most of all during the first phases of development, to shake the water of the developing bath. To avoid a forced development and keep the photographic aspect at its best, the most excellent technique is: make the print float with the image turned upside down; then delicately put your hand on the back of the print, creating a wave motion, for some seconds, so that all the possible bubbles can move, paying attention not to create an agitation inside the water that could force the development. If this movement is repeated every 3-4 minutes during the first fifteenth minutes and every 5-10 minutes during the following phases, this type of stains will be certainly occasional.

In July I attended a stage of carbon print held by Damiano Bianca. The stage has been programmed and structured with him and, for those who’re interested, it is possible to make arrangements for similar courses, individually deciding arguments, duration, modalities and subscription costs.

I took part in course every afternoon for almost a week, in Rome, inside the Damiano Bianca’s perfectly equipped dark room.

First day has been dedicated to a generic introduction of carbon print, followed by a practical demonstration by Damiano with materials he prepared before the lesson. Then he taught an argument per day, deepening the theoretical and practical aspect of each one.

• enlarged negatives: digital negatives inkjet printed with curves that Damiano developed;
• paper tissue: choice of pigment, support, gelatine preparation, different coiling techniques, paper drying;
• transport paper: paper choice, sizing and hardening techniques, drying
• print: sensitization, drying, exposure, simple transfer, developing phase, finishing touch.

Moreover every day, together with lessons and practices, one or two images were printed, always with materials prepared by Damiano and materials that we prepared the days before. I appreciated all the little skills in preparing every single print component that was the argument of the day, more than familiarizing with procedures and bring some pictures home.

At the end of the stage, one last afternoon has been spent printing with supports prepared during the week.

Pros of the Damiano Bianca’s workshop

Damiano Bianca, after detaching paper tissue (left hand) from transport paper (on the botton of the bowl), verifies that transfert and detachment happened the right way.
Please visit Carbon print workshop with Damiano Bianca for the full size image.

The course is extremely detailed and precise. Damiano Bianca seems answering to every question, adding considerable and interesting historical digressions.

One of the points that mostly impressed me was the theoretical explanation, a possible and reasonable cause that solved the technical problem as answers, together to empirical attempts or working procedures. This way of teaching allows the application of learn notions together to other print techniques, maybe in different environmental conditions or other materials. I attended Workshops where teachers only showed the procedure it usually followed, without any further explanation than “it works”. When my paper didn’t work, the answer simply was to buy in USA the paper he was using. Damiano Bianca is light-years far away. You do not only attend his carbon print workshop, but rather learn how each element react to a determined technique, how to adapt every single procedure to your own needs, why a standard procedure is working, which are the mechanism hidden behind simple and precise gesture of a good printer.

The extraordinary precision held during the entire course is another impressive point. Every detail has been controlled, from room temperature and humidity to drying and hardening time. Every bath heat is fixed with precision, the mixture is attentively prepared, gestures are proper and precise, all the instruments are the most suitable and practical anyone could ask for. This way, any time there’s an error, there’s also a technical explanation of the problem. Therefore, it can be solved or at least a possible strategy to bypass it can be found. Everything we talked since now is referred to carbon print, but it also allows learning a useful operative way for those who wants to push the limits of the rigor of their own dark room experience of both alternative and traditional techniques.

Damiano Bianca starts the development, or developing phase, of the transport paper.
Please visit Carbon print workshop with Damiano Bianca for the full size image.

Order and cleanness are essential. Damiano Bianca no-stops cleans instruments, table and the entire dark room. He is extremely attentive to dangerous chemistry, always uses gloves, avoids touching chemistry and doesn’t let chemistry contaminate himself or even the darkroom. This is another negative point of many other printers/teachers, which use chemical substances with excessive confidence, forgetting the real risks that characterize them, risks that they students have too (I’m talking about another personal experience, when during a stage held by an imprudent printer I breath a dusty cloud of uranium salt…).

Eventually, even if it’s not strictly related to the course, I really appreciated the sympathy of Damiano, his generosity and warm welcome that made me feel at home… ups, in my dark room…

Cons of the carbon print stage

Damiano Bianca controls if the development of the transport print is complete. This happens when the color ends oozing. This case requires a little supplementary time.
Please visit Carbon print workshop with Damiano Bianca for the full size image.

The only disadvantage I could underline is the duration of the stage; it is probably too long. Damiano Bianca doesn’t omit anything, doesn’t keep any secret, therefore the information quantity is enormous. After some days, it is hard to follow him, assimilating everything. This is obviously my limit. Damiano on the contrary is patient and pedagogical.

As the arguments and the duration of the workshop can be decided directly with him, I suggest attending no more than two days of course, participating not to a only big course, but some little courses separated by some weeks, in which it is possible to understand in your own dark room the technique he explained. This way, stages can focus on specific arguments, for example one on paper tissue, one on print, one on sizing, etc… Doing this, there’s time to maturate the learned experience and the information Damiano Bianca share can be better appreciated.

Future developments of the Damiano Bianca’s workshop

A perfect carbon print during its final wash, when white borders are cleaned from any gelatine or pigment residue.
Please visit Carbon print workshop with Damiano Bianca for the full size image.

Participating to numerous short courses allow planning advanced lessons on carbon. A week is not enough to explore all the arguments and variations Damiano knows or he’s working on. We haven’t got time to see many exciting arguments, for example double transfer, fixed photographic paper as transportation paper, a thick mixture with a few pigments to augment the relief effect, different supports as glass or Plexiglas, toning, etc…

The most thrilling technique I wish to try, for example, is the carbon dualtone, obtained overlapping two different layers of colored pigment on paper tissue, to obtain a print where shadows have the color of the lower layer while lights the upper one. I think, something you could loose your sleep over! And I did not considered Damiano Bianca work on carbon quadri-chrome…

Conclusions about the carbon print workshop

Damiano Bianca carbon print course has been an absolutely formative experience that values more than the subscription fee. Experience that not only made me approach this beautiful technique, but also ameliorate many other print techniques.

The best thing is organizing with Damiano to attend short deep courses on specific arguments, to assimilate all the information learn in each lesson and find time to explore advanced carbon print arguments.

I always had hard times sizing the paper used for printing in a fulfilling way. That’s the reason why I always tried to avoid sizing my supports. If this is possible with the ferric salts and the one coat gums, it is a serious problem when you want to obtain clean whites with multiple dichromate gums prints.

I never obtained good results laying gelatine, as the brush raises bubbles and bristle streaks. Dipping always gave big and ugly dregs once hanged out the paper to dry. Moreover, it is necessary to harden it twice and dry it inverting the bottom with the top to obtain a uniform gelatine thickness on the entire sheet; otherwise the gelatine will be thicker on the bottom.

During the month of July Damiano Bianca showed me how to lay gelatine using a threading tube large as much as the sheet.

During last weeks I bought a tube like his, but a little bit more rusty because I couldn’t find it in brass. Not to get the paper dirty, I also bought a stainless steel threading bar. It can’t be filled up with hot water as Damiano does, but if I leave it in 50°C water, I think it is hot enough not to make the gelatine wrinkle.

During summer holidays, I bought a new type of gelatine and during last days I wanted to try my bar. Therefore, today I wore my gloves, eyeglasses and gasproof mask (formaldehyde is extremely dangerous for lungs, better avoid to inhale in large quantity), I took some failed gum prints and went into the dark room.

I didn’t remember if Damiano wet or not his sheet before putting gelatine on (I’m sorry Dam, my bad; you taught me so much stuff that I didn’t took note of this detail). I tried on a Rives BFK dry sheet but it embarked and gelatine accumulates into hollows, both on 56x76cm and the half sheet. I tried to flatten or agitate the sheet as when laying the oil inside the skillet, but the results have been a disaster.

Next I bathe another sheet for 2’ in water at 40°, the same gelatine temperature. Then I put the sheet on a pane with the image upwards and I rolled it to press the water out of the sheet and make it adhere to the pane, not to imbark. The gum image doesn’t seem to suffer for it. I dried water from borders using toilet paper. This detail creates a sort of dyke to gelatine, avoiding drops out of the sheet.

Unfortunately I think that in this period of time, necessary for all those operations to be done, paper gets cold and its temperature decrease. Anyway my dark room today was 23°C, so maybe it will be a winter problem.

As the sizing solution has been poured at the center of the image, the mixture is positioned in a uniform way on the entire paper surface, as well that only a couple of threading bar strokes were necessary to re-distribute it on the picture rectangle. I dried the borders with toilet paper again, for the reason that, if gelatine oozes outside and goes under the picture, it is impossible to take it off once hardened.

I left the print on itself for tent minutes to let the gelatine do its job, then I peeled it off, keeping the most horizontal position I could, and transferred on a surface covered with blotting paper. I should build a humpback net to let it dry on the back as well and avoid the central accumulation, but I use an absorbent surface for now.

The surface remained perfectly smooth, without bubbles or imperfections. The humpback net should give regular thickness as well.

The only feature is not to let gelatine oozing out of the sheet. I noticed that putting the bar on the paper and starting pouring the gelatine on it makes the gelatine follow the bar. It would be easy, once the bar is moved, that the gelatine ooze where the bar crosses the sheet borders. If the gelatine is poured in the middle of the sheet and then the bar is leaned, only the center of the paper can be sized, leaving the borders dry.

Among all the sizing strategies, this one of the wet threading bar technique is absolutely the most precise and efficacious. Well, you must humidify one sheet per time, paying attention not to stick it, waiting a certain amount of time before moving it, etc… But those who work with alternative techniques do not care about speed rather about the result. And that’s the reason why this is the best technique.

Lots of Van Dyke Brown printers lament that a precipitate form inside a Van Dyke Brown solution, obtained during the preparation of the solution itself, or more precisely just before finishing to add C inside A+B, following the conventions and quantities of the VDB classic formula like the Wynn Whyte style says.

Not everyone obtains this precipitate and the principal reason is that ammonium ferric citrate is not a well-defined chemistry substance. (go to Mike Ware page for same examples), that means it changes from distributor to distributor and often from bottle to bottle.

VDB precipitate description

The precipitate I obtained, which has an aspect similar to the one described by many other printers, has a light grey-green color, a milky aspect, as it would be a suspension of fine grey powder. Just to let you understand, it has a color similar to mustard mixed with oil. Once obtained a homogeneous cream, in a ten-minute the oil starts separating from mustard and the visual aspect is, apart from the color, similar to the one obtained with VDB solution.

The precipitate is obtained when 2/3 of C solution has been added to A+B. Suddenly a precipitate takes form, in big quantities, as solution would have reached a saturation point and adding an only drop of C would bring immediately to the precipitate we were talking about. No matter if you mix more slowly, no matter if you let the agitator on for hours: the precipitate is formed and you can’t dissolve it anymore.

If you let the bottle aside, the precipitate settles on the bottom, occupying a volume that is almost the half of the entire solution. Agitating the bottle gives an opaque solution that produces an irregular, granular, maculated and black streaked print. Using the solution on the top of the precipitate, the print is correct, but the volume of solution we could use would only be the 50%. Analogously, filtering the solution means losing a big volume of salts, potentially composed of silver that, if inside solution, could be used to form the image. As the silver nitrate is expensive, it would be better to avoid this settle.

Other settlements in Van Dyke Brown solutions

This precipitate has not to be confused with other settlements obtained in Van Dyke Brown Solutions. It has nothing in common with “silver plating”, which is a fine film of metallic aspect, such a thin mirror. This film settles on the inner surface of the bottle or of the emulsion surface if it’s let at rest for some weeks. It has also nothing in common with the fine precipitate that settles on the bottom of bottles after some days, generally a poor quantity of fine dark green powder. These two types of precipitate usually interest a little percentage of the solution and do not cause problems during the print.

Empty bottle, which contained for some months a VDB solution. Inner walls are completely covered by a silver layer, phenomenon that goes by the name of silver plating.
Please visit How to eliminate the precipitate from Van Dyke Brown solutions for the full size image.

There’s no solution on how to avoid them, if it’s better filtering the solution or collecting the clearer solution near the surface and leaving the other part where it is or again shaking the bottle before using. There’s no match exactly because the ammonium ferric citrate is different for every printer. Sometime shaking augments print dmax, but also add an unpleasant grain; filtering can augment and decrease print contrast, change tones; etc, etc… In general some attempts are necessary to determine which one is the most convenient procedure. Once determined the method, it is easy to keep a constant standard.

In every case this kind of precipitate, with prudence, has a poor impact on print and do not cause a large lost of salts.

The precipitate we’re talking about has nothing in common even with the white suspension obtained when C is added too quickly in A+B solution. If you energetically mix the obtained solution, this suspension goes easily back in solution. If you did add too quickly the C solution, a completely insoluble gritty settlement takes form.

In every case I always added C in A+B solutions with a lab agitator and a burette regulated for about a drop every second.

Remedy for precipitate inside VDB solutions

Augmenting the concentration of the tartaric acid inside B solution helps avoiding this settlement.

Tartaric acid can also be added in a classical solution that already contains the settlement; in fact, mixing the settlement gives the solution back.

The first time I made this attempt, I added 0.5g of tartaric acid inside the classical solution with the settlement until it completely disappeared. Adding 2.5g of tartaric acid, the settlement disappeared, but the solution had an opaque and absolutely not transparent aspect. Adding some more tartaric acid didn’t turn it transparent; therefore I imagine that this suspension is a different from the original one. Once it is at rest at the bottom of the bottle, a fine and dark powder settle in small quantities that can be easily filtered. Either the solution can be shook before using; in both cases the result is a correct print, without streaks or grains.

This experience brought me to modify the classical VDB solution to focus on the one I identify as VDB2, which is a solution with 4g of tartaric acid instead of the classical 1.5g.

VDB2 characteristics

The obtained solution is more contrasted and it has a higher dmax compared to the classical one. Its hue seems the same, even if this one is controlled by some other variables such as the paper humidity.

A big difference is that there’s no more printing out, but paper develops during the first washing. When the exposition is visually controlled, this can modify your own habits, to the detriment of a strong overexposure, but it is still easy to determine the correct exposition after some test prints.

Conclusions

The usage of VDB2 formula, in my case and with my ammonium ferric citrate, allows deeper and more contrasted prints than those obtained with VDB classical formula. The image is anyway similar to the one obtained with Wynn White’s VDB solution, but the huge advantage is that you can use the entire solution and not only the 50%. It is a considerable economical benefit.

Classic VDB solution

Following Wynn White independently prepare three solutions:

A 33ml H2O and 9.0g green ammonium ferric citrate;
B 33ml H2O and 1.5g tartaric acid;
C 33ml H2O and 3.8g silver nitrate.

Combine solutions A and B, mix and then slowly add the solution C to A + B, constantly stirring. Leave ageing for a few days before use.

VDB2 solution

To avoid the deposit you get when you add C into A+B use the following modified formula.

A 33ml H2O and 9.0g green ammonium ferric citrate;
B 33ml H2O and 4.0g tartaric acid;
C 33ml H2O and 3.8g silver nitrate.

Compared to digital negatives, analogical negatives adapt more easily to the used techniques, allowing a larger margin of interpretation.

Digital negatives are precisely calibrated on an ensemble of constant variables. They practically function correctly for a certain type of paper, sensitizer, drying, etc… But they give bad results when changing those parameters, even for little changes. The consequence is that digital negatives are useful when a standard for a certain technical paper is established, but while searching and experimenting is easier to use an analogical negative, which better accomodate the variations of the printing technique.

It’s the reason why, even if in general I print using digital negatives or little contacts taken from 120mm negatives, I sometime prepare enlarged negatives. The procedure to obtain it is long and complex, lots of tests are required to learn how to obtain a negative perfectly adapt to a certain print technique.

During the first experiments I produced a series of enlarged unusable negatives, obtained contact printing a RC paper positive. Negatives always had completely transparent shadows and completely opaque lights, caused by the excessive contrast of positives on paper. As ideal negatives for antique techniques are usually thick and with not many transparent parts, those enlarged negatives were clearly unprintable: closed shadows and completely burned high lights, even using long exposition times while printing.

I would have found a way to reduce them and obtain printings from all those otherwise unused negatives.

One day, leafing through the book “The darkroom cookbook” I thought I could have tried some formulas to reduce negatives, to experiment and see if I could use those negatives.

I obviously needed a super-proportional reducer, but a particular formula suddenly stimulated my curiosity: the Eder’s harmonizing reducer. The book said:

This reducer works in a special manner, intensifying shadows and reducing high densities. It is used to correct exceptionally contrasted negatives.

That is, at least on paper, exactly the reducer I was searching for. This formula allows not washing away those little details of the shadows, or better intensifying them, and reducing high lights otherwise impossible to print.

Well, a dream.

Formula and instructions are the following:

Water 750ml

Hydrochloric acid (concentrate) 30ml

Dichromate potassium 10g

Alum 50 g

Water 1l

Completely whiten the negative in this solution and wash until the yellow color is entirely eliminated. Develop in a slow revelator, highly diluted (D-23 1:5 for example), therefore fix and wash.

And here’s a ton of questions that suddenly crowds my mind even before getting ready:

• What does “concentrate” mean?
• Does “Alum” stand for “Potassium alum”?
• Can the operations be carried out in a normal light or in actinic light?
• How can I foretell the right re-development time for each negative?

I couldn’t find any information on line about this reducer, but on www.apug.org forum I was said that I can actually use potassium alum and that muriatic acid has a concentration of 6N, while the hydrochloric arrives to 12N.

Materials and preparation to reduce negatives

Wikipedia says that hydrochloric acid concentrated more than 37% is a smoking gas, so I don’t think we have to use a gas that surpasses this concentration. Unfortunately this answer arrived after some tests with a hydrochloric acid solution that was less concentrated (0.1N), solution that functioned in any case.

If my chemistry memories are corrects, a solution of 0.1N of hydrochloric acid equals a concentration of 0.1M that is 36,5g of acid per liter of solution. As HCl density is 1,64g/ml, it corresponds to a solution of 0,2% that is 60 times more diluted than the concentrated hydrochloric acid. The proportion tells that 500ml of solution 0.1N contain almost 1ml of pure acid, while 30ml of concentrated acid contain almost 10ml. If all those calculations are corrects, I used a tenth of the hydrochloric acid indicated in the original formula. In any case, the solution seems working.

I put in a blender 300ml of tap water where I added (remember to add acid in water and not vice versa) 500ml of hydrochloric acid 0.1N. I made approximate doses, but as the recipe doesn’t give any advice about the requested concentration, I couldn’t make any equivalence. In any case, as hydrochloric acid is dangerous, I rather handle less concentrated solutions.

I added dichromate potassium and alum potassium to this solution, following the book indications. I made all the operations in daylight and it doesn’t seem to cause any problem

Negatives are Adox films, developed in ID11 B dilution, 1 to 5 minute, with an excessive contrast.

I re-developed using Perceptol diluted 1+4. This development should be like D-23 that is no more on the market (even if, I might say, the formula is reported on The darkroom cookbook).

Observation on the behavior of Eder reducer

Eder harmonizer reducer bleach negatives. I noticed though that the power of the solution rapidly decreases. After a dozen of bleached negatives 24x30cm, it takes more than 10 minute, while the first one took only one minute. This could be due to the fact that I’m using a solution that is less concentrated in hydrochloric acid.

I noticed any yellow stain, as the book said. Bleached negatives have a faint grey-green color and it doesn’t change even after an hour of wash.

The re-development seemed to me complete after 2-5 minutes, depending on negatives. Working with daylight allows an easy estimation of the negative, but the method is very approximate. In any case when working on accurate sensitometry normally you never have to reduce negatives.

Re-developed negatives color is brown and reminds in a certain way films developed with pyrogallol. It made me think that those kinds of negatives would have filtered a lot of UV giving particularly long exposition time. In reality it didn’t happen, so it seems like the coloration occurs in the visible part or that it doesn’t interest the wavelength sensitive to cyanotype or Van Dyke solutions.

A silver-gray layer settles in the re-development basin, more quickly than the one usually settled in the development basins. In any case, it is easy to remove with a little scratch.

Dupont 4-R problems

During the re-development I noticed some stains and irregularities in the negatives. They look like the streaks that I obtained with the old mirror toning by Tetenal when the bath wasn’t shacked correctly.

As I didn’t know if they came from the development or the reducer, I tried to pre-humidify the negatives before the reduction and the situation lightly ameliorated. Shaking continuously and energetically during the re-development seems eliminating the problem.

I noticed other types of stains, completely different from the firsts. Some marked right lines, maybe some problems of Adox films.

In each case, defects are visible in uniform zones, making the negatives poor of details unusable.

Results of negative reduction

The reducer seems working out. It reduces strong densities and intensifies the weak. I must admit I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own two eyes.

The majority of reduced films turned into decent cyanotype prints. There’s an augmentation of the shoulder of the negative curve and in many occasions lights, even if they become printable in a reasonable time, are flat and dirty. In some other cases anyway, negatives gives more than acceptable prints.

I printed with a friend of mine a series of cyanotypes of the last fragments of the Berlin wall. Unprintable negatives, with high washed lights even after 40’ of UV, after reducing, gave best results in 12’. The final print of one of my portrait instead is barely acceptable, with high, dirty and flat lights.

Conclusions on Dupont 4-R, Eder’s harmonizing reducer

The few experiments I made with Dupont 4-R, Eder’s harmonizing reducer surely surpassed all my expectations. This reducer saves unusable negatives even if it can’t work magic, and sometime results are mediocre. It depends on the image and its negative; talking about the Wall’s series, the result has been more than satisfying and the reducer allowed me to save otherwise unprintable negatives.

Its only problem is related to the stains obtained during the re-development. Even if an important shook seems to eliminate all the little streaks from the film, there are some clear and unpleasant lines that remain and turn the print of images with huge uniform zones impossible.

I only need to verify if those problems are due to Adox films defects, to the re-development product used (Perceptol) or to the particular formulation of the reducer. In fact the use of a higher quantity of hydrochloric acid gives a reducer that nears the formula described in “The darkroom cookbook”, and could maybe remove the problem.

In any case the experience demonstrates the saying that all the printer of antique techniques knows: “do not throw anything away, one day you’ll find a way to use your waste”! In this case, some unprintable negative has been reduced in a gratifying manner, giving prints far from any expectations.

Some weeks ago, talking with famous French palladium printer Jean Claude Mougin, we started discussing about cyanotype print hue. In that occasion, he said that when cyanotype tends to violet is because paper is probably basic and could contain a buffer of carbonates. As is common knowledge, cyanotypes prefer an acid environment and preserving them in a basic environment could harm their life span. Therefore, it should be better to avoid basic paper.

I tested several cyanotype papers and cheap drawing papers are my favorite; the nice watercolor paper, neutral and 100% cotton, gave inferior visual results. In particular, drawing papers have a violet tone that I found more agreeable than the cyan of the more noble ones.

Therefore I suppose those papers contain a buffer of carbonates and this could harm the life span of prints.

The development I use is more acid though, so I hope this can neutralize the paper buffer.

Dick Arentz, in his book about platinum print, another technique adapted to acid environment, explains that on modern papers, which almost all contains carbonates buffer, a double coating of sensitizer highly augment the tirage quality. Dick Arentz speculates on the fact that the first coating could be necessary to neutralize the carbonates on paper and prepare a correct environment to receive the second coating. On the other hand, pre-acidification baths practice is well known to every platinum and palladium printers, a coating of acid solution such as the palladium sensitizer equals to a mild pre-acidification, so the theory seems to make sense. In every case, if a first coating of product does help to neutralize the buffer, 10 minute of washing in an acid bath should be more than sufficient to guarantee a not excessively alkaline environment.

Moreover the majority of my cyanotypes are toned to tea with a final alkaline bath. In Mike Ware’s cyanotype book “ferric gallate” and “ferric tannate” are two stable compounds. And they are the compounds contained inside inks used for 2000 years; medieval books are written with the same product contained in cyanotype toning. This is exact only when tannic acid and sodium carbonate are mixed, and not through more complex chemistries such as a cyanotype on a paper with a buffer toned to tea. Anyway I think that the presence of an alkaline buffer doesn’t modify the product present in the print, therefore the preservation of my prints should be relatively long.

Unfortunately, the practice to add a buffer inside paper is recent, so I don’t think there’s a right and satisfying answer to cyanotype storage on modern papers. Cyanotypes I prepared some months ago didn’t move, maybe in ten years I’ll be more serene, nevertheless I’m optimistic.

Cyanotype is known to be stable as platinum or pigment prints, so I don’t think it is terribly sensitive. Tone in presence of buffer should ameliorate the stability compared to a normal cyanotype. Moreover, I’m not extremely interested into conservation problem; if my prints surpass 50 years, I’m satisfied. If it’s 100 or 500 years, well it doesn’t matter to me. I’m interested into reaching the soul of my contemporaries, during my life, what happens next I don’t care. It would be a problem if in 5 months all the prints would turn into green, as with inkjet prints of some years ago. But when a procedure guarantees some decades of life, well I’m completely satisfied.

So I will keep on printing cyanotypes on papers that have a violet tone, so sweet compared to the saturated and brilliant obtained on more neutral papers.