Wye Forest no1 Print: Lith Versions

This is another print from the visit to the Wye valley on the English-Welsh border. I first printed this as a conventional print on Ilford RC paper back in 2021. Through the vagaries of Flickr it garnered the most views and second most 'likes' of anything I have posted. (I don't chase likes, views, or explores on Flickr.) I don't know why but it perhaps has to do with not seeming too digital though I also think the dark mood was part of the appeal. This and other similar prints' success have encouraged me to explore the darkness more. 

And so, I return to this to see if I can work any lith magic on this image. The original print took some wrestling to get it into the final form. I had to suppress the brightness especially in the upper part of the image in order to achieve the vision of peering into a secret in the deep forest. This turned out to be simpler with lith.

I started with a simple straight exposure. I metered the light part of the scene in the center and adjusted the aperture (f8) till I got to Ev 3 (@ISO 100) which is my Oriental Seagull lith exposure starting point. This means I can use 32 second exposure and expect a decent result. I shortened the exposure one stop by moving to f5.6 

f5.6 16 seconds (Scan001)

The color is the slightly warm taupe color that Oriental Seagull gives when developed in lith developer. Again, I see the bright daylight from above and so aimed to darken this by burning these areas and what follows are different attempts at this. 

f5.6 16 seconds
Burn from around center from 12 o'clock to 9 o'clock.
(Scan002)

f5.6 16 seconds
Burn from around center from 12 o'clock to 9 o'clock.
(Scan003)

In these cases, the development proceeded unevenly, and I tried another exposure with some burning of the center, but these were a real mess, so I do not reproduce them here. 

Each of these images is uniquely good. The amount of light admitted gives a different view of the scene, revealing loss or more. 

Toning 

I proceeded with selenium 1+3 toning. This gives a magenta cast on this paper. It is much warmer brown on the Fohar Raster paper which I like more.

F5.6 32 sec burn center 16 sec
Selenium (1+3)
(Scan004)

I am striving for one version where I could get a warmer light in the center. I have been thwarted. I tried next sepia toning which shifted the tone to slightly more red. 

f5.6 16 seconds Sepia toned
Burn from around center from 12 o'clock to 9 o'clock.
(Scan005)

There is a slight move to a warmer tone with this so probably worth doing though the effect is slight.

Finally, some blue toning. I am getting to the end of my Moersch MT7 toner kit. I decided to try a formula from Steve Anschell's Darkroom Cookbook.  There are two formulae this one uses acetic acid which I have while the other uses oxalic acid (which I don't have). I made half a liter as follows

• 250ml distilled water at 50C
• 4g Ferric Ammonium Citrate
• 4g Potassium Ferricyanide
• 50ml 99% Acetic acid
• Distilled water to make 500ml

I mixed it in the tray as it is single use. I added the acid last as this activates the chemistry and starts the clock on the exhaustion. This is a much stronger blue toner that the MT7 kit and I would probably reduce the Ferric Ammonium Citrate and the Potassium Ferricyanide by half. I used the same clearing bath from the mT7 kit and lots more water washing to clear the blue color that kept bleeding from the paper.  

I then toned two prints (Scan002 above) and one that I bleached and redeveloped in Tanol film developer. (The Tanol re-develop did not impact the image in the way I hoped so I reused it as a blue tone experiment.)

Scan002 iron blue toner

This has the typical heavy cyan tone that I don't like much. It gets close to green in some of the darker mid-tones. I will ammonia fume this to bring a change to deeper blue. 

Bleached and Tanol redeveloped version
(Scan007)

This turned much darker and the blue is slightly less cyan. 

Here they are again with ammonia fuming. 

Scan 002/006/008

Scan 007/009

Here is the progression of the first of the blue toned prints...

Fomabrom Variant VC FB 123

Finally, I present a lith made on the Foma Fomabrom Variant VC FB 123 paper. Sometimes this paper does not work very well for me, but it worked nicely here. It is much grainier and has a somewhat warm tone. The paper is fogged but still useful for lith. I sepia toned this print and it brought about a nice soft warmth in the highlights. The fogged borders also had the same warm tone. (This scan has Photoshop borders.)

Fomabrom Variant VC FB 123 Lith Print
Sepia toned (Scan011)