MorseBlog

Introduction During the last few days as I have been making and toning images on Ilford MG Art 300 paper I got the idea that the paper has such a nice weight and feel it could make good note cards. Pursuing this idea I started with the Gradient Birch image I have been using lately. Needless to say I like the image a lot. It is also easy to print as it doesn't require any manipulations like burning or dodging. Since I plan to make a lot of these I didn't want an image that is complex to produce. Blog Post Cover Image Card Layout: Deciding on a Size I started out with the 12 inch x 16 inch dimensions of the paper I have. A reasonable card size is 4x6 inches folded from 4x8 inch paper. I can get 4 of these from a 12x16 sheet. At £3 a sheet it is less that £1 cost for each card. I then have to figure the image size and aspect ratio and borders. I doodled on paper starting with the 3:4 ratio of the 4.5 x 6 cm negative. Not surprisingly 3x4 inches works nicely with fat borders. These...

I set out to apply some of the sepia toning work I did to a good print rather than the test prints I was experimenting with.  Original Print Gradient Birch I started with Wood Walton Gradient Birch. It has some very subtle layers of tones. When I originally printed it I had a lighter and a darker version. I decided to use the darker exposure as most of the time if bleaching is used the image loses some of the original exposure.  I made 3 prints in this fashion with this exposure with 3 minutes Eco 4812 development, stop, and fix. I then washed for 5 minutes, hypo clear for 5 minutes and wash again for 5 minutes. A fourth print I doubled the exposure. This one was part of a my plan to try the sunlight toning I developed in a previous post. I speculated these would benefit from extra exposure due to the deep bleaching.  So I settled on the following set of prints to try.  1) Simple Sepia: Normal exposure. Tone Sepia only nudge it warmer at 2:00 minutes in 1+100 Sepia...

Introduction During my prior post on Sepia toning I had a thought about bleaching somewhat unrelated but inspired by  the moment.  I was inspired as I was taking photos of the prints in the bright sun after bleaching and I was aware that the ultraviolet from the sun was probably 'printing out' the image much as a lumen print does. (Ultraviolet light is energetic enough to leave metallic silver that makes a visible image.)  Naturally as this was a bleached image it would only print out the silver in areas where it was left in the latent image. The non-image silver had been removed by the fixing stage.  Original Image (note lack of density in upper and upper right of image) So I took another test print with good densities and endeavored to bleach it back as far as possible. This I did with 7 minutes of potassium ferrocyanide 1+9 solution. What remained of the image...

I decided to break out the Moersch MT 4 Sepia toning solution and give it a try. I am usually not a fan of warm tone prints or sepia toned prints. It is a just a matter of personal taste but it is always worth exploring things outside of your own creative sphere. (This is the smelly form using sulfur (or sulphur if your are from the UK.) Moersch MT 4 Sepia Toner I read through the documents on the Moersh Photochemie website .  The sulfur/sepia toning documents are here (NSFW images) . Like most of Wolfgang's documents I find them poetically confusing. Whether this is because English is a second language or just a style I find it frustrating and entrancing at the same time.  The article is really part of an overall discussion on toning and bleaching with the linked section focused on sulfur toning.  Here are some things I gathered to aid in understa...