More 'Ma': Film from Digital Print: Part II

Another print from this series that emphasizes negative space using film negatives created from a digital image. 

I made a series of images on the same foggy morning on Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. There was some ice on the lake and a shifting fog obscuring and revealing the far shore. 

I find foggy images exceedingly difficult to print and there can be many interpretations of an image as a result. (Here is an example of one such exploration of the range of a print's possibilities.) The difficulty stems from the lack of ability to manipulate the contrast using multi-grade paper. There is a limited contrast range achievable even from the highest contrast filter. The negative itself has a very compressed range of tone due to the subject matter. (This is perhaps where digital can excel however the limited range is inherent in the image and even digital can create visible quantization effects unless one is careful in post processing. )

There are other techniques to improve the contrast of the image. One is to use a lith developer. This can and does produce a higher contrast image but has a distinct aesthetic as a result which may not be what one is aiming for. One can also create masks to improve the contrast. This can be very effective but is very labor intensive and is something I started on in the past but have not proceeded with. 

One can bleach back the highlights as I did recently in post on this same subject. It is also possible to pull the print early from some conventional developers before the highlights have had a chance to form. I ended up using this technique on this print.

I have also developed something I call physical split toning that can be used to improve the contrast of a print. Also there are variable contrast developers like Moersch VGT developer. 

For this negative I chose to limit the manipulation of the image before having a negative made. Since I send it out to be done, I have no ability to impact the development process of the negative. In order to illustrate the difficulty in printing this image I present a test print below. Soft filter #00 on the left and hard filter #5 on the right. The paper is Ilford MGFB Classic. The developer is Moersch ECO 4812 mixed 1:10 dilution. 

Test Print 
(Soft filter left, hard filter on right)
(8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45, 64 seconds right to left exposure times)

As one can see the hard filter can achieve a deep black but only at the expense of the rest of the scene. Looking at the shadow (trees) in the 8 second exposure and matching to highlights in the 16 second exposure shows there about 1 stop of contrast in the hard filter. 

In truth however there was no pure black in the scene so one must move to shorter exposures. Pure white for the fog results in the shortest exposure at 8 seconds but almost no sign of the trees so some kind of compromise is required. 

I moved further left and settled on about 22 seconds (fourth from the right) and added 13 seconds of extra burn to the tree line and below. The hope was to improve the darkness of the trees. I also developed this for 2 minutes rather than the full 3 minutes. The ECO 4812 developer can offer more contrast with a shorter development time as highlights don't get fully developed until the last minute of development. This is why the sky is lighter in this print compared to the same time as the test print. 

Final Print
(#5 filter 22" burn tree line #5 13")
(2 minute development)

This is fairly good and about the best I can hope to achieve using the techniques I have applied. I decided to try another technique to improve the contrast without changing the result too much. Colored pencils. I have hand-colored photos before. My favorite paper is Ilford Art 300 paper as it is a pure cotton rag paper and has enough 'tooth' to pick up the color form the pencils really well. This print is on a matte paper which works OK and is much superior to gloss. Gloss paper is nearly impossible to hand-color with pencils. 

For this print I am sticking with gray pencil colors. There is a whole other approach to bringing in cooler or warmer tones that might also be appropriate. But I am sticking with a neutral palette. I found a black pencil too jarring as I want to keep the trees a softer gray as they are seen through the mist. So, I started with a dark gray and shaded the tree-line and then moved to lighter grays as I moved to the right as the mist thickens in that direction. 

I then lightly sketched in black the basic tree trunks to pick them out better. Finally, I went over the highlights with some white pencil to bring up the contrast a bit more. Some of the smaller darker patches on the ground got a little dark gray treatment as well. Keeping the gray tones consistent keeps a more natural look. 

Below is the result. It seems a much-improved version of the image. The contrast is subtly improved but not overdone. The tree trunks are emphasized, and this brings a sense of another dimension to the print.   

Hand-colored Final Print