Revisiting Wye Valley Forest: Part III Final Toning

Increasingly I find that lith printing is not an end to itself but a component of creating the final image. These images I have created lately starting with lith printing I think of as being archetypal or perhaps liminal images, if I understand the terms. I plan to discuss these emergent ideas in a later post.

I am gaining a better understanding of the process of lith printing and toning and can now direct the activity a little more. I would not think of mastery as it seems to be an unachievable objective and probably would destroy the process if it were achieved. For to master a process steeped in randomness or serendipity would be to thwart the power of the process to create what wasn't imagined before.

From my earlier post in this series, I chose a few images to work with. I wanted to use one from the Oriental Seagull paper and one from the Fohar Raster paper. I would tone them differently in different areas. 

I wanted to try the sepia toning on the darker sides of each image. I also wanted to use selenium toner on the ground portion. Since these would interact in the bottom corners, I elected to tone the bottom first with strong selenium (1+3) toner. This should convert most of the silver to silver selenide rendering it invulnerable to the sepia toner. I then toned the sides is sepia. Each paper type gives its own results. (Note: These all have Photoshopped borders applied as the toning tends to stain the borders and leaves them unsightly. When framing I would apply a matte to cover the borders in any case.) 

Fohar Version

For this paper, the selenium gives a strong orange tone which suits the forest floor well. I only immersed this portion of the wet print in the toner being careful to keep the rest of the image out of the toner. A careful eye will note that there are a couple of small spots where drops of toner got on parts of the print no intended. This reminds me to be careful next time. 

For the sepia toner I moved the project outside to avoid the effects of the sulfur fumes. Again, the Fohar paper was resistant to sepia toning, and it was only when strong sunlight came out did it begin to tone. Once again, I immerse only in the areas of interest in the toner. I also used shadows to restrict the activity of the sepia toner on this paper. In each case I washed in water and HCA. 

Finally on this print I found the neutral tone of the center part of the image distracting and clashing with the soft tones of the rest of the image. I decided to bleach the print back a little with potassium ferricyanide (1+10). In theory this would most affect the untoned section most. This alone warmed the tone a little in the highlights. I then redeveloped with Tanol film developer. I have in the past had interesting results and had a slight green tint from the stain in the developer. This time it seemed to warm the highlights, which is not disagreeable at all. I consider this image a success. 

Final Fohar Print (Scan022)

Here is the before after presentation to show the effect of toning. 

Before (top) After (bottom)
Final Fohar Print (Scan016 vs Scan022)

I also made a test print I present here for a complete record. Selenium toned forest floor and sepia toned rest of image. 

Fohar Print (Scan021)
Selenium + Sepia

Seagull Versions

For the Seagull version I started with the same selenium and sepia toning steps. The selenium and sepia resulted in a lavender color palette of much warmer colors. This print is interesting as it stands but I may try some iron blue toning aimed at the untoned center of the image to continue the cooler palette theme. I would then finish off with some ammonia fuming to shift the color to a darker blue.

Oriental Seagull (work in progress Scan023)
Selenium toned forest floor and sepia right and left sides. 

A couple of criticisms so far; 1) When burning the sides to get the center of image emphasis I should have burned the forest floor as well. This would have made the selenium toning more consistent in that area. 2) I chose to tone to the edge of the slender vertical tree for the right-side toning. In the Fohar version above I opted for the larger leaning tree as the toning edge. This I think is the better choice.

I sepia toned one of the lightly developed lith prints and so I include it here for completeness. It creates a soft lavender tone. 

Sepia toned undeveloped lith print.
Oriental Seagull

Iron Blue Toning

The next step is to explore some cooler tones. For this I am nearing the end of my MT7 iron blue toning kit from Moersch Photochemie. I have learned to love this blue toning as an acquired taste. At first the garish blue tones clashed with my conventional black and white aesthetic of neutral toned prints. Over time I have gained an understanding of how the blue can work, especially in forest scenes. 

Ludwig Romer is a particularly good artist in the lith and iron toning. Below is one example of iron blue toning. 

Nebel am Hochtannberg
Moersch 4812 developer and MT7 Iron Toner
Credit: Ludwig Romer

Wolfgang Moersch himself does some wonderful work with iron and cobalt toning.

Both of these gentlemen I follow on Flickr for inspiration. 

I took a few prints including the Oriental Seagull print from above and toned them with the iron blue toner. One advantage of this toning is that it can be reversed completely by immersion in a weak base solution like ammonia. This allows freer experimentation on even really nice prints. One can also shift the color through use of the same technique, either as a weak solution or by way of my new technique of fuming. 

Overall, the ammonia treatment takes the color away from the more garish or saturated blue/turquoise toward a more royal blue. There is also the chance of warmer almost pinker hues emerging as well which when mixed with the blue makes for a more interesting palette. 

I will show some examples as an intermediate step of strong basic iron blue toning. Then I will apply the ammonia fuming technique to see if I can morph the colors to something more interesting. 

Oriental Seagull

Oriental Seagull (work in progress Scan002/023/025)
Selenium toned forest floor and sepia right and left sides. 
Iron blue toner throughout

This first one is a continuation of the earlier image with the toner applied. It has a slight greenish tinge likely due to the potassium ferricyanide not clearing completely in the clearing bath. The border exhibits the telltale yellow stain.

Oriental Seagull (work in progress Scan006/026) 
Iron blue toner throughout

This is a simple straight lith print with iron blue toning. 

Oriental Seagull (work in progress Scan004/027)
Sepia toned to lavender 
Iron blue toner throughout

This is a sepia toned print that gave a subtle lavender color. The hope is the ammonia fuming will bring some of that color back.

Fohar Raster Paper

I toned a couple of the Fohar paper liths.

Fohar Raster (Scan014/028)
Iron blue toner throughout

Fohar Raster (Scan015/029)
Iron blue toner throughout

This last one suffered from uneven development which left a dark area in the bottom right corner. This creates the impression that light is streaming from the right-hand side. I want to make manipulations like this that are more intentional.

Ammonia Fuming

The final treatment was to apply ammonia fuming. As discussed above iron toning can be adjusted or eliminated in the presence of a base or alkali. Normal paper developers do this as does ammonia. I developed the idea of using ammonia fumes in an earlier post here... and I applied it to some of these blue toned prints as presented below. 

Oriental Seagull (Scan023/025/30)
Selenium toned forest floor and sepia right and left sides. 
Iron blue toner throughout
Ammonia fumed 'to completion'

This is my project image at its final planned phase. The blue tone deepened as expected away from the earlier turquoise blue to bluer almost violet color. The selenium toned forest floor retains much of its warmth and the shadow areas on the left and right that were sepia toned have a distinctly different blue color. 

I say in this case it was fumed to completion because I discovered that fuming seems incapable of reverting all of the blue color like a weak ammonia bath would with very long term exposure. I attribute this to the idea that the fumes may not be able to fully penetrate the emulsion despite several minutes of fuming. Incomplete fuming leaves the effect patchier, and this can be effective in certain circumstances, but I chose to opt for even and continuous toning change. (It may be interesting to wet the print before fuming to see if this induces different color changes and complete reversion.) (Update: I tried wetting the emulsion and re-fuming a print and indeed it lost all the iron toning. I updated my post on this here...)

What follows are other simpler fumed examples. 

Oriental Seagull (Scan006/026/030)
Iron blue toner throughout
Ammonia fumed 'to completion'

Oriental Seagull (Scan004/027/031)
Sepia toner throughout
Iron blue toner throughout
Ammonia fumed 'to completion

This second one has a distinct color I attribute to the sepia toner applied before the iron toner. (Note the small warm spot in the upper left of the image. This is where a drop of ammonia landed and removed all the iron toner from that spot.)

Fohar Raster (Scan014/028/031)
Iron blue toner throughout
Ammonia fumed 'to completion

The final one is an example of fumed Fohar Raster paper. 

Finally, I present a composite of each stage of the project print to view the effect of each stage in the process. 

Project Print Comparison
Lith Print (upper left)
Selective selenium and sepia toning (upper right)
Iron blue toning (lower left)
Ammonia fuming (lower right)