First VDB print. Not too shabby. The cyanotype version didn't fair as well as this.
Still not sure if I like brown that much... got some gold toner I'll inflict upon it hoping for a more black colour...
this is good, especially for first time! If you want more of a black/brown platinum is your best bet. Gold is nice too, it goes a purplish brown. it's really amazing how much the particular paper effects the colour of the print, even with toner. I tone all my VDB's; they have better density and are more permanent.
Vaughn - Not yet but I was thinking about it as I have some leftover silver nitrate around already from the VDB process.
davido - I'm not sure if we get platinum toner over here (and I'm fairly sure the platinum salts are only available at Bostick & Sullivan - yay! import fees ahoy!) I'll try it out on my other papers too. I have a large stockpile of papers from all my cyanotype testing...
I don't really like brown... I don't like warmtone prints or sepia or anything similar. But I wanted to try VDB because I liked the look of Wynn White's pictures on this page (where I got my directions from) http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_vandyke.html the pictures on that page don't look like this one. Those look hardly brown at all. I've tried goldtoning and it's just a slightly darker brown now. I'm not very happy with it.