Black and White Paper Odd Behavior

[Too Many Cameras]

Last week a buddy of mine was working the darkroom and had paper behave in an odd way. Instead of the darks turning black, the darks turned into tarnished silver. We're not entirely certain what he did except that after exposure he developed it for half the time then rubbed fix onto the paper and then put it back in the developer for the balance. He then stopped, fixed, and washed it as normal. Our chemicals were Lauder paper developer and fixer.

I've tried for literally eight hours in the darkroom to replicate that and have had only two moments of success. One one print I had a thumbprint turn the darks under it to a tarnished finish. On another print where I was rubbing fix in with a paper towel, the periphery turned rose-colored.Any ideas on how to replicate the effect? It was quite stunning and would lend itself to some very interesting applications.

 

[jp498]

Tough to replicate. You could try solarization, but that is tough to replicate as well. Either if these could go wrong if you do step 2 just a few seconds early or late. It's happy hapenstance.

 

[Too Many Cameras]

Yeah, that's how it looks. It seems that the chemicals were behaving oddly because they hadn't been changed in a few weeks. So the fresh chemicals with the same process simply turned the blacks green. I'm going to keep experimenting. The look was just fabulous and it would be a good one to replicate.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Silver physical development. http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Physical/physical.html