MorseBlog

I was perusing YouTube the other day looking up information on toning. I ran across a nice little video of making Anthotypes from Paul Bishop . He presents it in a straightforward enough way I thought why not. There are lots of other online resources.  Before my holidays I ordered some Isopropyl alcohol and Borax and when I returned gave it a try. He used turmeric and I have plenty of the stuff so started with that. I placed about 1/2 gram of turmeric in 100 ml of alcohol. I stirred it well then used a coffee filter to filter out the solids. The result is a yellow liquid of the Curcumin in solution. Curcumin is the chemical responsible for the yellow color of turmeric.  I sensitized a piece of paper with the tincture. The paper I chose was the backside of some MG Art  300 test prints. It is a cotton rag paper. As such it absorbs a lot of the tincture and I am not certain a thick absorbent paper is best but this is what I tried first. I placed the paper on a baking ti...

I moved on from my previous post to try some more ideas I developed as I worked on those prints. I decided to try and make a higher contrast film and a toned film. New Film Versions Higher Contrast: Expose f8 11 seconds full development 3 mins Eco 4812 Bleach 1+10 for 5 minutes. Fix 1 minute.  Selenium toned: Expose f8 11 seconds develop 45 seconds. Selenium 1+3 tone about 1 minute for purple tone.  The trouble I soon find is that I have a lot of combinations that are possible now as I can mix and match papers and films. Below is the comparison matrix. The bottom row is the same from the previous blog post. A map is offered below to help describe what the variations are.  Summary Table Legend for Image Matrix Thoughts on the Results A couple of things come out from this. 1) The higher contrast film allows more of the underlying image tone through. 2) A toned mask tends to dominate the overall color. This is in part because the negative is high contrast and as such the ma...

Introduction I have long been a fan of split filter printing where you expose the paper with a low contrast (soft) filter and then a high contrast (hard) filter. The balance of exposure times give the degree of contrast one wants. I find it a more intuitive and easier system than hunting for the right filter value. It also allows more dodging and burning control.  Recently I have been exploring toning and there is a split idea here too. Toning with two different toners to change the warmth and character of the image.  Thirdly a few months ago I stumbled upon a technique I called Lith-Lith where I developed a Ortho Litho film with lith developer aiming to get a higher contrast image. This failed, however I did get a sepia colored transparency that I mounted in front of some aluminum foil to produce a spectacular result.  This led me to think about how to combine these techniques. I had run out of my original Orth Litho film from Photowarehouse in the US and with no prosp...

My wife says she likes watching me working in the shop as I seem so focused and relaxed. She is right. Yesterday was a good day like that. A morning bike ride, then breakfast and out to the shop for a shortish project I dreamed up the day before. Some of my recent square prints were begging for frames and to be displayed.  So I found myself out in the shop most of the day fashioning them from scraps of pine I had laying about. I used nothing but hand tools so the work was quiet and contemplative. Japanese hand saws, a rabbet plane, smoothing plane, and a chisel were all I really needed. The work was small and delicate as the frames were small and I wanted them to be light and simple.  I had Jackson Browne's Solo Acoustic Vol 1 and 2 playing. An excellent album I only recently discovered. I grew up with his music but never owned an album of his. None of the songs were ones I was familiar with but that didn't matter. His rapport with the audience makes it all the more interestin...

My recent work in the darkroom has had me focused on small prints including some 4x6” notecards. The small prints were 6x6” printed on 8x8” paper. I really like the look of this format and when a print comes out well it is a small jewel in one’s hand. I have been printing on Ilford’s MG Art 300 cotton rag paper. It has a very nice texture and feel to it as well as a nice visual quality. A break from smooth untextured FB prints.  I was cutting the 8x8” paper from 12x16” sheets. This meant I got a 4x8” scrap of every print or test print I made. I ended up with a decent pile of thee scraps. On the back of my pleasing notecard project I realized these scraps would make nice cards aqs well but 4x4” in size once folded. I experimented with two image sizes 3 1/2 x 3 1/2“ with 1/4” borders and 3 x 3” with 1/2” borders. I used the North Wales photos from my previous post on the 6x6” images.  I had to adjust the exposure by removing a stop of exposure to compensate for the smaller image...

While making a print earlier my first test strip moved during the exposure of the test strip. In looking at it more I decided I liked it. The subject was the three trees from North Wales.  Original print The test strip is here below.  Inspiration! I decided to try this formally as an image. I considered how to shift the image. The shift in the test strip was from flattening the curl in the paper. This has the potential advantage having the two images pivot from the ground. I rejected this though as it seems harder to control and there will be a loss of focus. Still it is worth thinking about as the result may appear more like a shadow which could be useful. I decided on a simple horizontal shift. Since the original print was almost entirely the full horizontal range of the negative I needed to create some space for the shift. I cropped the image in tighter to make room. Since it is a square image I lose some sky but I shifted the crop up to have less ground in the foreground....

Introduction One problem with cameras that shoot 6x9 negatives come when you find your enlarger is only 6x6. I like my Fuji GSW 690 with a 65mm lens on a wide negative. I do have a 4x5 enlarger but it is so large it sits on the top floor and is inconvenient to use. In the past I have printed 6x9 negatives on my 6x6 enlarger and indeed have printed 6x17 as well. The strategy is two-fold. 1) Crop a smaller (say 6x6) portion from the larger negative, make a diptych or triptych or more with multiple images.  Today I start with two images from a pre-lockdown holiday in North Wales. I will print these on Ilford MG Art 300 paper that is quickly becoming my current favorite paper. The first image was straight-forward because of the way I composed the photo in camera as I didn’t really intend to use the full negative. I wanted to make this image in the style if Michael Kenna. Below is this first image.  Scanned full negative I cropped to the upper 2/3 of the image. It is quite a h...

During my last project of making note cards I thought about adding my 'Morse Bros Studio' logo to the back of the card. Since the back of the card carries the light sensitive emulsion I could print this along with the image before development.  Alas I decided not to because of all the time involved making a template. In a previous post I described how I make archival print labels using an image copied on ortho litho film. I have run out and with Coronavorus preventing travel tot he US I could not pick up any fresh material this year.  Photowarehouse and Arista sell very cheap traditional ortho litho film. (I have recently discovered RK Photographic here in the UK carries Wephota product and I have ordered some.)  The Photowarehouse Ultrafine ortho litho film is less than $1.00 for an 8x10 sheet whereas Wephota is like £2.00 per 8x10 sheet. Other Ortho film from Ilford, Berger, Rollei and Adox is much more costly. Adox is 5.40 Euros, Berger is over 4.00 Euros, Rollei is 7...