MorseBlog

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 o...

I just mixed a fresh batch of ECO 4812 (1+10) and looked at my notes. This last batch was mixed back in February. Finally, development times were running past the customary 3 minutes hence the fresh batch. I am reminded why I have enjoyed this developer for so long. I am also reminded of Wolfgang Moersch' s own words about his developer... After 20 years of experience with the creation of developers it is time to break new grounds. Modesty and self-effacement are inappropriate. While others beat the drums and blow the horns, a flute would be too silent to be heard: ECO 4812 original “eau de Hürth” is my best positive developer and thus probably the best developer on the planet. Hurth is the town in which he resides. For me the benefits have been 1) a neutral tone as I don't generally like warmer tones, 2) Very economical, 3) Ecologically friendly As far as economy is concerned, I spend time in the darkroom intermittently. I may take off months between sessions. I like to know I...

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 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...