MorseBlog

I continue on this journey today with some more experiments. First, I am still trying to extract warmer tones with Fish and Chips being part of this process. Fish and Chips is a rehalating bleach based on potassium permanganate as the bleach agent and the use of sodium chloride as the source of the halogen rather than the traditional potassium bromide.  The impetus was to be able to develop and tone silver chloride in the bleached areas. The trouble is my only source of warm tone developer is the lith developer EasyLith. Today I recalled that I have some old Ilford Universal PQ developer that I stopped using as I don't like the warmish tone it delivers. The trouble is that Universal PQ is formulated with both KBr (Potassium Bromide) and BZT (Benzotriazole) as a restrainer. BZT delivers a cool tone while KBr contributes warmer tones.  I took some test prints from the prior session that had been developed in Moersch ECO 4812 developer to get a neutral to cold tone print. I the...

A private theory of mine is that the Impressionist artists got some of their ideas from the emerging technology of photography. My insight, if one could call it that, was spotting dust off of black and white negatives of my brother's to be included in a book I was making of his work. When you work that closely on an image you can see how the image is built up out of different shaped grains of silver of differing density and size. A photo that conveys a clear and focused image of a familiar object is composed of pieces that are nowhere nearly so sharp or definite when examined closely.  To me this is similar to what the impressionist did with a paint brush. Not interested in marking shapes and shades in sharp well drafted lines they are made with strokes, brushes, or points of color and shade. Anyway, that is my theory, I have no other way to defend it.  This led me to think that I could make images that were intentionally very grainy. That led me to think I should try landscap...