MorseBlog

I have spent some time experimenting with old photographic papers. It is a strange preoccupation of mine many of whom would think of as a waste of time. Certainly the results are not as good in many cases as new fresh paper for conventional prints. There have been some exceptions for me though and I look forward to further exploiting some of the things I have seen on some old papers. I recently wrote of my disappointment in a box of unopened Panalure paper. And while an initial disappointment it did turn out to be a good Lumen paper with a nice lavender color before fixing and a retention of some nice salmon color after selenium toning and fixing. Examples can be seen below. Unfixed Panalure Selenium toned (1+19) and fixed Unfixed Panalure Selenium toned (1+19) and fixed I also experimented with using developer and fixer like paint or ink. While I wouldn't say these are art they represent ways to use paper for non-photographic uses. There is a rich history o...

Shamelessly following Wolfgang Moersch  the Magical German Chemist on Flickr I ran across his recent Lumen print series where he has coaxed some amazing colors from black and white paper. Always up for an experiment I put some of my vintage paper to the task. None are as good as his but still good fun. I used some Kodak Velox paper. I would guess from the 1960s. These I arranged in a printing frame with various plant samples sandwiched with a sheet of thin Perspex on top. I left these in the sun for 2 hours. It was the waning evening sun after work. I then tried fixing and developing and toning them. The results are below... This I developed very quickly (about 10 seconds) in Universal PQ developer before fixing. Hawthorne leaf. This was fixed in Rapid Fixer. Juniper branch. The brown is some residual selenium toner. Fern fixed in Rapid Fixer. Another fern, this time toned in selenium 1+3 toner and fixed in Rapid Fixer....