bench in water

Oh, I wish I could see the real print, its looks astonishing!

Looks like a great shot too bad you have all that crap surround it and taking away from the strong image itself. try croping on the scan and repost I would love to see it enlarged.

Great Print

I really like the feel of this one, but I wonder if it would have been stronger if the bench were centered. The rocks and the sky turned out really nice! I'd like to see it in person too.

- Randy

2nd vote for "crop the 'over the top' excess substrate" . . . looking at this I feel we are very much torn by the frenetic brush edges, vs. the more sublte (and more "valid") content of the negative itself. I like the feel of seeing the brushmarks on works which require applying the substrate in that way... but here it just overpowers the content we are all really after.

You need to cut back on your van dyke solution! You are using WAY to much to coat your paper! There is enought there to make probably 2-3 more prints. You should only be coating the image area...no need to coat so far out. Save chemistry and money.

What you need is a contrastier negative. PN 55 really doesn't make good negatives for alt prints unless you intensify the negative and increase exposure for the shadows.

As for the brush marks that's up to you. Personally I don't prefer them. Double coating VDB will increase your DMAX and provide a little smoother tones but speed will be decreased. I always double coat VDBs.

You can conserve toner by using 30ml at a time and tone the print in a flat bottomed tray.


Compositionally the horizon spilts the print which may or may not be desirable.

You could bleach this negative, redevelope in pyro and print it again. This is someting you may wish to try if you want to continue to use this film. An alternative is to develop the film seperately in film developer and forego the Polaroid developer. And you may wish to try a contrastier paper, such as Platine or Cot320 or use a contrasting agent.