First Van Dyke print for me

I had a great time yesterday at a workshop given by another member of my Darkroom Group photo club. He goes by the name of Steelbar here on APUG.

He showed us how he prepares Cyanotype and Van Dyke prints, and we all got to make our own Van Dyke prints as well.

(He also showed us what was involved in making the necessary negatives for those who only have digital files, but we won't go into that here).

I picked a negative that I had shot in my old Six-16 Kodak, modified slightly to use 120 film.

I thought something shot on Plus-X in a 75+ year old camera seemed appropriate.

Thanks Bruce, and here is a scan of the result.

Van Dyke browns or Brown prints are quite beautiful and it is a technique to which I have devoted some considerable time. With most of the historical processes I have experimented with, image permanence has often been an issue, often resulting in modern technological techniques to arrest the image. However, with Van Dyke Brown that has not been the case. Some months in to my experiments with this process, I put one out on a table in the garden on a bright August day (England). The sunlight was ferocious and I put a rock on top of it and left it for a few days. The intensity of sunlight was sufficient to fade an average newspaper in this time. When I removed the rock I could see no discernible difference where the rock had been. I was most impressed and hence continued to experiment with this process.

To my knowing, elementary / metallic silver isn't photosensitive in any way? And again, to my knowing, the permanence issue with any of the processes which results with a nanoparticle silver image is related to the vulnerability of silver nanoparticles to (1.) chemical impurities left in the support (due the nature of the process and/or bad processing - e.g. iron ions left in paper, ... etc.) and/or (2.) atmospheric pollutants (e.g. sulfur dioxide, peroxides, ozone, ... ect.) and/or (3.) other factors, but not to the effect of light, because, elementary / metallic silver image simply doesn't fade in light! Does it?

P.S. Nice first print Matt!!! Vandyke is beautiful and (if toned) very very permanent.

Loris Medici said:

To my knowing, elementary / metallic silver isn't photosensitive in any way? And again, to my knowing, the permanence issue with any of the processes which results with a nanoparticle silver image is related to the vulnerability of silver nanoparticles to (1.) chemical impurities left in the support (due the nature of the process and/or bad processing - e.g. iron ions left in paper, ... etc.) and/or (2.) atmospheric pollutants (e.g. sulfur dioxide, peroxides, ozone, ... ect.) and/or (3.) other factors, but not to the effect of light, because, elementary / metallic silver image simply doesn't fade in light! Does it?

P.S. Nice first print Matt!!! Vandyke is beautiful and (if toned) very very permanent.

Click to expand...

Well said Loris and I have many prints dating back many years that are still the same (thanks to the use of Borax).

Hi Clive. I do pt/pd, gum and casein dichromate (with extremely stable pigments) and gold-thiourea toned Vandyke, therefore, my own benchmark of stability may not correlate (it doesn't...) with yours.

Regards,
Loris.

P.S. Forgot to add cyanotypes, those are pretty stable too...

Thanks Clive and Loris.

I think I'll show it at my other photo club - the digicentric one - and see how many have any appreciation for it.

Well done Matt and welcome to the world of alt printing! VanDykes can also get quite colorful when toned, so there's lots to experiment with since it's such a cheap process.