MorseBlog

I took this photo on the same day as the earlier print Rising Mist . It was a bright cold morning with mist rising from the frosty forest floor. This one was a bit more challenging to print. Again bright sunlight emanates from the top left so offers a range of light. I started with tst strips. This time I decided to divide the print in half and print soft filter intervals along the top and hard filter along ghe bottom.  f32 Test Soft filter Top Hard filter bottom Intervals on top 8-64" 1/2 stop intervals right to left I looked at the soft filter and saw it didn't look soft enough so I miss-guessed the aperture and should have opted for f45. I made a guess at f45 for the soft filter at 11 seconds which is 1/2 stop less than the lightest strip from above. I then applied a hard filter test strip acorss this guess. f45 Test strip #00 1 second base exposure Hard filter intervals 8-64" 1/2 stop intervals right to left.  Rightmost band has no hard filter applied.  .This provide...

A classic dish in the UK is fish and chips. It is traditionally served with salt and vinegar (acetic acid). This has become the title for this post, as the bleach I intend to make is one I found on the Moersch Photochemie website , as it uses vinegar and salt. The formula is listed below. Water approx. 50°C 750  ml Potassium permanganate 6  g Sodium chloride 13  g Acetic acid 98% 50  ml Water on 1000  ml The appeal for me to try this bleach is the rehalation uses chloride not bromide. This may change the toning outcome from a bromide paper.  (The term rehalation means to add a halogen ion to the silver ion. A halogen or halide is one of the group 17 in the periodic table that includes Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine and others. The term derives from Greek for 'salt producer' as it combines with alkali metals to form salts such as common table salt sodium chloride. Three of the halogens are the basis for silver-based film and papers, silver chloride, bro...

I finished a conventional version of this print and now it is time to have some more fun and explore what lith can do for the image. I like printing foggy images in lith as you can get a nice contrast increase and the rich tonality can give unexpected results. This time I have further motivation as I picked up 10 sheets each of Forte Polywarmtone and Oriental Seagull Exhibition paper in 16x20 size.  Oriental Seagull is a well-known lithable paper and I have enjoyed using it. I thought I could get more in this exhibition variety (spoiler alert: It liths very nicely). Forte Polywarmtone (PWT) is another old paper known to lith well, so I was keen to try these papers out as well. I plan to cut these all down to 8x10 sheets so I can get more mileage out of these no longer available papers.  I am back on Moersch Easy Lith as my lith developer. I used the recommended 1+25 dilution that has me add 20ml part A and 20ml part B to 1L of water.  First, I started out with my origina...

Introduction In a couple of earlier posts on my physical split printing and toning ( Here and here ) I used Wephota FO5 technical film for the transparency portion of the work. Being a technical film it is very high contrast which can be a benefit and a curse. For the physical split printing project the film worked well enough; however I wished for higher contrast to allow more of the substrate image tones to show through the surface image. I also have been exploring masking in the enlarger and my work so far has struggled to get a high enough contrast dodge mask so there is a second use for controlling for higher contrast.  Another area I have worked on was my Lith-Lith prints  where I created a warm tone positive transparency from technical film that I mounted over aluminum foil for a spectacular look. In this case I want to reduce contrast so more of the primary image tones show. So again a desire to control for contrast. The final piece to this was that a number of years a...

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...