Fen Drayton Fog Lith Prints

With my current lith printing jag I have learned how to get satisfactory results quicker than in the past and this has encouraged me to do it more. I also get results that lack the grainy gritty look I don't favor. So, time to dig into the back-catalog. Three of four storms have blown through the last week or so and this has kept me stuck at home. 

I recalled several years ago photographing on a bicycle ride to work on a wonderfully foggy day. It was one of my first times photographing in fog and I believe I had just bought my Fuji 690 GSW camera. 

So, with a couple of rolls of HP5+ I went to work but taking my time enough to capture 2 rolls worth along the way. The bike path follows an old railway bed and so travels through the countryside including some old gravel quarries turned into an RSPB reserve near the village of Fen Drayton. 

I metered with my Sekonic 308 and overexposed the fog by one to two stops. The fog was extremely heavy (almost too much so) and being wedded to my bike I was not able to get really close to subjects. (The Fuji 690 GSW's wide angle lens (65mm) is great for heavy fog because it allows you to get close to the subject and this helps get the subject better exposed.) 

You can see the scanned images here and here on Flickr. They lack contrast and when conventionally printed with multigrade paper it is hard to get much better. 

Lith Prints

I made some 8x10 prints on Oriental Seagull G2 paper. I metered the negative in the fog areas at Ev 3.7 at f5.6 so this is close enough to my target of 3.1. I tried 32 second and 64 second exposures with and without burning the area above the reeds.  

The two different exposure intervals give different results as a lighter exposure emphasizes contrast with the deep shadows getting infectious development and the highlights lagging far behind. Higher exposure times mean the highlights darken more rapidly and so the gap between infectious areas and the highlights is reduced. The burning of the fogged areas accentuates this in that area alone. These higher exposure highlights can also take on weird and delightful patches of tone. Also, the burn may allow very faint areas in the distant fog to become more distinct.

I made a fresh batch for EasyLith 20ml A + 20ml B +700ml old brown + 300ml water. I heated this for 4 minutes in the microwave. With the developer this hot, the image comes up and is done within a minute or two. I tried snatching just as the reeds reached maximum black. As always with differing levels of success. The first three prints gave a range of interesting results.

This first print is a simple 32-second exposure. I felt like I snatched it too late and the water in the foreground built too high density. Also, the reeds/shore on the left went infectious as well. Still the lighter tones in the sky give the most warmth with this shorter exposure.

scan003
f5.6 32 sec

Here is the same exposure with the background/sky burned 32 seconds extra. In this case though the print ws snatched earlier than the one above so they become very different images. 

scan004
f5.6 32 sec + burn background 32 sec

This next image shows the effect of more intense exposure and added burn in the background above the reed heads. Here the highlights begin to build tone more and the contrast is reduced. The warm sky tones are sooted with more development. The far shoreline vegetation is more pronounced as is the water in the foreground. This is where the sky areas build patches of density that are probably not present in the negative. Never-the-less they look credible as something hidden in the mist. The image is more complex and darker. 

scan001
f5.6 64 sec + burn background 64 sec

A consistent problem is on the left edge of the image in the mid-ground the bank of reeds there gets infectious quickly and this creates a distracting smudge there. I thought to dodge this area, but it is close to the reed heads I want to keep infectious. Instead, I opted to recompose the image slightly to the right and then raise the enlarger head to get the gaps in the reed heads aligned with the edges of the print in a pleasing way.   

This helped immensely with the next two prints.

scan002
f5.6 64 sec

This first image is a straight 64 second exposure with an earlier snatch time. This has some nice background tones which make for a a soft look and not as sooty as the Scan001 version above. There is a sooty smudge in the middle foreground which might be from touching the paper or it could be a lith oddity that you just get. The recomposition works to a great extent. 

scan005
f5.6 32 sec + burn background 32 sec

Finally, there are some black dots in the center of the image in the water. I thought at first, they were a flaw, but they are in fact ducks!

Ducks!

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