Bertie (print)

I wonder if very dilute bleach on the end of a fine brush with water playing on the section as required might be easier? You can actually see his left eye if you look closely and his face invites you to look at him closely. He has a very expressive face

Great portrait ! I don't know if bleach works on Multigrade, but that would be my suggestion to get the eyes to sparkle on graded paper.

Thanks for the suggestions. Do you mean ordinary household bleach? I have enough scrap test pictures to try it without ruining a decent print.

Great composition & expression from the beloved beast (handsome beast). Detail is superb - all the texture, grain in the wood & Bertie's muzzle renders so real you can almost feel the heat.

@Svenedin No I mean the potassium ferricyanide that is meant for print bleaching. Now you are up and running in printing terms the "Photographer's Master Printing Course" by Tim Rudman might be a worthwhile purchase. I found it a very informative book and not that expensive these days on the likes of Alibris, Amazon or Abe Books

@HiHoSilver. Thanks. My mother wanted this picture and then her friends wanted it as well........when I was a student I used to make a few extra quid doing pet photos but that was a long time ago. It isn't easy......they rarely stay still but Bertie was tired and was too lazy to move. Also getting people to pay me wasn't easy either so I was often out of pocket for paper that I could ill afford.

@pentaxuser thanks for the recommendation. I will look it up. I have the "Darkroom Handbook" by Michael Langford. I am quite rusty really. I didn't use multigrade back in the day so multigrade printing is new to me. I used to print everything on graded 2 or 3 so multigrade seems quite amazing!

Love a Cavalier Spaniel. A good tool for dodging with MG paper is to get an old MG filter set and cut up the harder grades, like 4 and 5, then attach them to your wand.Easy to make them any shape you want.
Use one of those for dodging as it not only holds back the shadows, but gives them a contrast lift at the same time.

@Svenedin As some have indicated, use FeCn bleach (the Zone System in a bottle as some well known photographer called it). It is a cumbersome technique, which, when well mastered, can produce amazing results. Tim Rudman, Bruce Barnbaum and some other
texts have detailed explanations of its use. It removes density from the print, while increasing local contrast.
I haven't used it for a long time, but I ended up diluting it and putting a thickener in it, to avoid streaks. Controlling the viscosity of the bleach allowed for very localized bleaching.