Print Journey Part IV-Foggy Path in Aversley Wood

 As promised in my previous post I decided to pursue a low contrast filter approach to this print. My rationale was that the steep transfer curve of the #5 high contrast filter left me on a knife edge in order to manipulate tonality. Having spent some time in the darkroom this evening I can confirm my hunch was half right. The #00 filter on this image does yield a much greater range of tonality. I ran a test strip at f4 and at f8 (2 stops less light). Each test strip is 3 stops in range so there is one stop overlap. I ended up with over 4 stops of exposure range where some part of the image was visible. With the #5 filter it was probably on the order not more than 3 stops. 

What is also clear however that when I reach comparable dark tones of the images I produced with the hard filter there is missing contrast. The hard filter was contributing something toward the final image I produced. I could not expect to reproduce that with dodging and burning either as it si local contrast such as the difference between a dark limb and the lighter fog. 

So that idea failed. I could not achieve anything like the same image with the soft #00 filter. Still I persist. Why? Because I see perhaps there is another version of the image. This becomes my next stop on my study of this image in this journey of a kind of formalism that one reader generously suggested I was up to. 

I made a couple of exposures of the whole image form some strips of leftover paper to gauge the tonal range with this filter before exposing a whole sheet. I exposed these at f8 and 16" on the #00 filter. 

f8 #00 16 seconds

Next I sought to make something more so I gauged the lightest part of the image should be 16" to maintain almost white for the lit fog and used 32 seconds elsewhere. Basically I dodged the center bright area for 16" while exposing the whole image for 32 seconds. I then replicated the same corner burns as before with 16" each. 

First pass low contrast print. 

This I found that I was heading in the same direction as the prior instances of prints though likely with less contrast so not as effective. So I re-evaluated as I think I see a high key version. 

I am debating internally how to bring up the detail in the brightest central part of the image. I think I will try flashing. Flashing is meant to pre-expose the paper enough to get past the 'toe' of the paper. Photopaper has a toe in the exposure transfer curve where extra light is required before it first starts showing tone. By placing enough light on the paper that is just below the point of showing tone it is often possible to bring out more detail in highlights.  

I have an existing flash test strip for MGIV Classic. It was made with a light source with Ev of 2.6 @ ISO 100, I checked the  Ev at this enlarger height and see it is Ev 2.0 so I will stick with 4 seconds as the exposure that gives no discernable tone though it is slightly less than optimal. 

My first image I made with 4 seconds flash and 16 seconds #00 exposure and it looked more fogged than I expected. 

4 seconds flash and 16 seconds #00 exposure

I remade a couple of test strips, first a conventional #00 test strip though I flashed the paper for 4 seconds first. I also remade a flash test strip. These confirmed I could see no impact of flash up to at least 5 seconds so this batch of paper was very close to the original flash test strip in that regard. The #00 test strip indicated some darkening of tone so I opted for another print at 13" 1/4 stop less. 

 4 seconds flash and 13 seconds #00 exposure

Not much improvement. So I try one last time with no flashing and revert to 16" #00 filter. 

No flash and 16 seconds #00 exposure

In the end I am not sure what I think about these. The last is the best of this series but are just really dim images or do they have a mystery to them I cannot decide. It may take some time to decide if I like or hate this... 

My next exploration on this journey is to try lith developer.