Handcrafted Silver Gelatin

Hi All:

Some of you may be aware of the Silver Gelatin forum on APUG. Making developing-out silver gelatin paper (i.e. b&w paper ) is not widely practiced yet. I have high, high hopes that will change soon. I'm lonely!

Unfortunately, APUG is doing its APUG thing to the dialogue. If you recognize what I mean by that, I need say no more. If you don't, I don't know how to say more.

Long story short (hard for me! ) I'm moving any contributions I have to make to the emulsion-making dialogue to hybrid. We're still a little thin on the non-digital facets of our crafts, but I think that is changing. In the interest of fleshing out tech info, I have recently posted an update to my AgGel research.

http://dwrphotos.com/blog/Section7/Toning.htm#Current

Hopefully it will start a conversation here -a very small and very slow conversation, to be sure, but yuh gotta start somewhere.

Cheers,
d

Denise,

Though I have nothing to contribute, I think what you are doing is extremely interesting and look forward to your postings on this topic here!

Don

Don Bryant said:

Denise,

Though I have nothing to contribute, I think what you are doing is extremely interesting and look forward to your postings on this topic here!

Don

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Ditto what Don said.
kt

Thanks Don and kt. I love this place and its folks. You're all invited to my place for hot chocolate (and vodka)

d

Denise - I would like to think of you as being on the leading edge of the next alternative process. Others don't recognize that yet.

Joe:

I've got my fingers crossed for the best of both worlds: Anyone can go into their darkroom and whip up a batch of custom paper and/or open a box of quality commercial paper. I know I'd hate to see my Ilford Multigrade FB go away. I also know that it wouldn't be the end of the world. Nice thing to know.

I hope everyone is looking forward to a great photo'ing weekend.
d

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mkochsch said:

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Funny; I was just in the kitchen fixing a cup of tea, thinking about how much I like Denise's instructional pages. The illustrations tell the whole story with a minimum of text, making the information immediately accessible and understandable. It's a model to aspire to. But while I'm handing out kudos, Michael's website is also wonderful; a wealth of technical information presented very elegantly, intelligently and succinctly, a joy to peruse and learn from.
Katharine

Michael and Katherine:

Thanks for the nice words. Lovely way to start a Monday morning!

I'm glad Katherine pointed out Michael's website. I've read it so many times I probably have it memorized. I hope everyone appreciates how important the 'open source' concept is. It's the intellectual component to volunteerism and probably just as underestimated, but it is almost certain that private individuals, contributing and sharing, will be the progress engine of the forseeable future.

And, if anyone reading this is not aware of Katherine's website, they should take a look. Talk about a wealth of accessible information. I love color and I've been circling round and round the idea of combining 3-color gum with silver gelatin. Now... that'll be a bit of work and I need a nap just thinking about it and it's all KT's fault! Her gum portrait of apricots has me salivating every time I see it. Beautiful.

Denise, I've been meaning to respond to this for some time, but life kept intervening. Thanks for the kind words. A couple of comments:

I really appreciated what you wrote about Michael's (and I'd include by extension others who share the same attitude about information, like Clay, Bjorke, etc) open-source approach to digital negatives and about volunteerism; I think there's something profound and important in what you said. I agree; it's individual people, working together and helping each other and sharing what they know freely and creating community that will preserve what sanity is left in the world and maybe even restore some of what's been lost.

I find your thought about printing 3-color gum over your silver emulsions intriguing. I hope you won't be deterred by the remarks about how complicated gum is. Gum isn't that difficult, at least printing gum isn't that difficult. It's when people start explaining gum and trying to agree on what's going on with gum that it starts getting contentious and complicated.

When I was looking at your page on toning, I enjoyed seeing the different colors you got with the different toners, but being a gum printer, I was thinking that you could get the same effect with a layer of gum over the basic image in silver, the way some of the folks here do gum over platinum, or gum over cyanotype; in each case I could picture the pigment you might use to get the same color. And it seems to me that doing gumovers (I hope this won't offend gumover printers) is less complicated than doing the whole thing out of gum from scratch, because in the case of a gumover, you're just using the gum to add color to an existing image, not creating an image from gum. I don't know if you ever have prints that don't turn out perfectly that you could use to experiment on, but if so, I'd say start with one of those first and just try it. You've already got the spirit of adventure and the perseverance that makes a good gum printer. I'd be happy to provide any assistance I can along the way.
Katharine

dwross said:

Michael and Katherine:

Thanks for the nice words. Lovely way to start a Monday morning!

I'm glad Katherine pointed out Michael's website. I've read it so many times I probably have it memorized. I hope everyone appreciates how important the 'open source' concept is. It's the intellectual component to volunteerism and probably just as underestimated, but it is almost certain that private individuals, contributing and sharing, will be the progress engine of the forseeable future.

And, if anyone reading this is not aware of Katherine's website, they should take a look. Talk about a wealth of accessible information. I love color and I've been circling round and round the idea of combining 3-color gum with silver gelatin. Now... that'll be a bit of work and I need a nap just thinking about it and it's all KT's fault! Her gum portrait of apricots has me salivating every time I see it. Beautiful.

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and where can one find these wonderful website's people are raving about?

Hi Katherine:

Thank you for the offer of assistance. I will be taking you up on that. I am not even remotely deterred by the Mysteries of Gum. Quite the contrary. Re: 'Choosing colors and curves': I'm (almost) never sorry I've asked a question. Certainly not when the answers are as intriquing as the ones you and Michael have been postulating. I typically take a break from the darkroom in the summer. There is more than enough rainy winter weather in the PNW for cozy, safelight days, but it's only three weeks into June and I'm already twitching to get back to emulsion play and that will definitely include color - and that, probably gum. A couple of weeks ago, I finally got Wall's 1925, "History of Three-Color Photography", and it's almost as good a summer read as Nora Roberts. Fascinating. His excitement about actual color photography and how fast the 'new' technology was moving along is contagious. I just set some gelatin out to bloom . I'll keep you updated even if my sunshine-addled brain doesn't get organized enough to do my website.

Ann:
I don't know Clay or Bjorke, either (sorry!! guys). Maybe they can chime in or Katherine can post their sites. Her's is http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/ and Michael's is:Dead Link Removed or Dead Link Removed . Mine is www.dwrphotos.com.

You bring up a really good point for us. ('Us' being hybrids, of course). I hope we can get more organized by Fall with our info collection and sharing. We're a young site and our members are as busy working as typing and we're still managing to build a base of knowledge. I'd like to see us do a wiki thing with historical/hybrid photography. That would probably be a huge task, and of course, it pretty much depends on what kind of time jd can find. Hope springs.

Thanks, Denise, for supplying those links. I was starting out to look them up, but clicked on Michael's link to inkjetnegative.com and got mesmerized by his OakHammockMarsh gum print and didn't get any farther.

I wasn't citing the websites of Clay Harmon and Kevin Bjorke but simply including them in my note of appreciation for those who have given to the community in open source materials and software for digital negatives. Kevin Bjorke is the person who gave us ChartThrob, and Clay gave us his ingenious ternary diagram of colors that predated Michael's arrays.
kt

Hi All:

Well, my Great Gum Adventure has begun. Such fun! I'm reporting in way too soon, because I'm only in the very first steps, but a big, nagging worry that I've had is put to rest. To my knowledge, no one has tried gum over handcoated silver gelatin paper. The surface is tough as nails so I knew it would be a ready-made sizing if it worked, but I was afraid it might be too tough and repel the hardened pigment. Fortunately, my first yellow layer test strip (coated over a silver gelatin "K" layer) looks just fine. I'm using Daniel Smith's water soluble relief inks in potassium dichromate. So far, I've only tried the Hansa yellow - 0.5 g / 10 ml gum arabic solution / 10 ml sensitizer.

My scanner is on the fritz. It's put in a couple thousand hours of work, so I probably shouldn't be surprised, but I hope it only needs a vacation. As soon as I'm scanning again, I'll post pictures - pretty or otherwise.

My heartfelt thanks to Katherine Thayer and her great website on gum printing. I took her recommendation of a EBV#2 photoflood for my printing light. Works great (and warms up my chronically cold hands! A very nice thing.) I'm at the point where I hardly know enough to know what questions to ask, but it's comforting to know that there will be knowledgeable people here ready to help.

One step down, only about a hundred to go. A photographer can never be bored - at least the hybrid variety .

Denise

dwross said:

Hi All:

Well, my Great Gum Adventure has begun. Such fun! I'm reporting in way too soon, because I'm only in the very first steps, but a big, nagging worry that I've had is put to rest. To my knowledge, no one has tried gum over handcoated silver gelatin paper. The surface is tough as nails so I knew it would be a ready-made sizing if it worked, but I was afraid it might be too tough and repel the hardened pigment.

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Actually, I had worried some about that myself, since in some long-ago experiments, I found that gum wouldn't stick to regular BW silver prints on either glossy or matte commercially manufactured paper, but then I told myself that handcoated emulsion on watercolor paper might be different enough that this might not be a problem, so I should just wait and hope for the best. So I've been standing by with fingers crossed. I'm delighted that it's turned out not to be a problem. Keep on gummin'
Kath

Katherine:

Thanks for the crossed fingers! I'm glad you didn't share your concerns. I was well worried enough as it was. The handcoated stuff is a breed of its own. I do a lot of finger crossing. At the workshop last year, one of the students, whose thing is sepia toning tried it on Strathmore Rough and glossy baryta, the only two papers we coated. It worked just fine on baryta, but the emulsion bubbled and dried up into blisters like a pox on the Strathmore. For the life of me, I can't see the logic in that.

I've been hoping the tooth of the Fabriano would make a difference, and after all, the emulsion is just hardened gelatin. But, I'm learning my lessons. Next, I have to prove red and blue. I'm using Daniel Smith's prepared gum arabic, but I also have some dry powder on hand to make up diffferent viscosities. Cross those magic fingers of yours again, because I really don't want it to come to that. I'm as lazy as the next person.

d

Hi All:

I decided to risk turning on my scanner despite its death rattle to send something to the hybrid gurus for diagnosis. Since it seemed to be scanning fine, I started in on my gum prints and the death rattle stopped and so far, so good. Maybe it really did just need a vacation.

I've posted my gum work as it stands today at
http://dwrphotos.com/blog/Section11/AddingColor.htm

Be charitable. If ever there has been a work in progress, this is it! I know that gum can be beautiful. Katherine has proven that. Thanks for the inspiration, Katherine, and all the great intel on your website. I'm almost to the point where I know enough to start asking questions.

d

dwross said:

Hi All:

I decided to risk turning on my scanner despite its death rattle to send something to the hybrid gurus for diagnosis. Since it seemed to be scanning fine, I started in on my gum prints and the death rattle stopped and so far, so good. Maybe it really did just need a vacation.

I've posted my gum work as it stands today at
http://dwrphotos.com/blog/Section11/AddingColor.htm

Be charitable. If ever there has been a work in progress, this is it! I know that gum can be beautiful. Katherine has proven that. Thanks for the inspiration, Katherine, and all the great intel on your website. I'm almost to the point where I know enough to start asking questions.

d

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Honesty compels me to say pretty damn good Ms Ross. Keep up the great work.

Don Bryant

Denise, I was almost finished with a rather long post and then it disappeared into cyberspace, so I'm starting over to write another, hopefully shorter one to replace it.

There's no charity required here; this is a fine first effort. I know you're not entirely pleased with the results, but take a minute to pat yourself on the back. You've managed to make it across the field without stepping on any of the mines that await beginning gum printers; you're doing very well indeed.

Blues: I've never been happy with pthalo as a blue for landscape, especially with the reds and yellows I tend to use, because the combination doesn't tend to reproduce the greeens of nature very well. My favorite blue for landscape has been ultramarine. I'm also interested in Prussian for landscape, but can't say I have enough experience with that yet to evaluate it properly. But if trying different blues doesn't help your greens, then I would be inclined to say, maybe you should try a different red, as the reds you've chosen are unusual. I'm curious what led you to these choices for red; it's a brave choice.

The Daniel Smith catalog doesn't say what pigment they're calling "permanent red" in their water-soluble ink line, but in their watercolor line, "permanent red" is PR 170, a semi-opaque, not very lightfast pigment (it fascinates me that many paints labeled "permanent" aren't) and the fact that the ink is downrated as to lightfastness (the only clue as to pigment used) leads me to suspect that it's the same pigment here. The rhodonite isn't a common pigment; it looks like a natural earth, probably a magnesium silicate material. I have no experience as to how it behaves in tricolor printing, but I suspect that your lack of satisfaction with the colors may have to do with the reds you've chosen, in combination with the pthalo. The Daniel smith PR 170, at least in the watercolor line, is on the warm (yellow) side of the red spectrum, and the reflectance curve of the pigment doesn't indicate good mixing potential with blues. As to the rhodonite, you're entirely on your own, but it appears that these two reds in combination with the phtalo are giving you some odd casts in the greens.

The yellow you're using is an excellent common pigment for tricolor gum, and you're using it at a good punchy strength, so I don't think the fact that your grass didn't come out yellow green as it should is the fault of the yellow, either the choice of pigment or the pigment concentration.

I wouldn't have thought of using printing inks as pigments for gum; it's obvious they work better than I would have predicted. Am I correct in my reading, that all but the rhodonite are the water soluble relief ink, and the rhodonite is watercolor paint?

Okay, I'll quit there; just a few thoughts for your consideration, but believe me, you're doing well.
Katharine

Thank you, Don and Katherine. If anyone doesn't know, Don makes beautiful gum over cyanotype prints. That may be the most creative solution to the "blue problem" that I can think of!

Katherine:
I went with the water soluble inks because they were cheap and came in BIG (5oz) tubes. Daniel Smith's summer sale catalog has gotten me in more mischief than I care to confess to. I figured that I'd go through a lot of material getting started. Since I'm printing on a unique surface, I don't have a lot of proven guidance available - so "Winging-it R Us". I liked the idea that the inks came in a set and were likely to be compatable. By adding in the Rhodonite watercolor, I might have undone the compatability, but I really didn't like the look of the Permanent Red ink straight out of the tube (orangey). I had the Rhodonite on hand and liked how it looked combined with the red ink (it's almost magenta). Also, the Perm red ink was the only one in the set that had a lower lightfastness rating (II rather than I) and the Rhodonite is a I. Since 0.5oz. of it are about the same price as 5.0 oz of ink, I crossed my fingers that it would be an acceptable way to stretch expensive watercolors. I'll try other blues with the red combo before I abandon the effort, but I suspect you are spot on suspecting the red of malfeasance.

Today is a major studio cleanup day (what a mess!!!) and I'll see if the local art suppy store has ultramarine and Prussian. I'll keep you informed. Thanks again for the encouragement.

d

Denise, all your logic makes perfect sense, and I also wonder if maybe the printing inks were an inspired choice for helping adhere the gum to the silver emulsion. My thoughts came out of my own process, which is rather different from yours in important respects, and should only be taken as information, not guidance particularly. I think you should just follow your intuition as you've been doing and keep wingin' it.
kt

Denise, Prussian blue pigment is the same chemical compound that makes up a cyanotype, so if you're looking for that kind of blue, Prussian may be the way to go, unless you want to really add cyanotype to the process. One caveat: Prussian is one pigment where you really have to watch the brands. Daniel Smith and M. Graham are very permanent; other brands are less so.

For the moment, I have another thought that I should have thought of last night but was tired, having just come in from a couple days in Portland. To start, I might suggest doing nothing different except backing off the pthalo a bit. Pthalo is a very intense pigment and a little goes a long way. I still think your red may be problematic, but I also think you're using quite a lot of pthalo in comparison with the other colors, and that may be responsible for the green tinge. You observed that "the print ended with a greenish cast without the grasses looking properly green." Excess pthalo could account for a greenish blue cast in the overall print, and the odd red might account for the grass being an off color. That PR170 just doesn't have a good curve for mixing. You had the right idea in adding the rhodonite to move the hue away from yellow, but it's not just the hue, it's also the pigment characteristics, including the reflectance curve and the relative positions on the color wheel, that determine the palette of the mixed colors. PR 209 (quinacridone red) is fairly close in hue to PR 170 but has a wonderful reflectance curve, which means it mixes beautifully (or more accurately in our case, creates color mixtures by overlay beautifully) with a whole range of colors, whereas PR 170 doesn't mix well with any color but red, having a reflectance curve that's flat across the rest of the spectrum. But PR 209 is also more yellow than you'd want for a blue that's in the pthalo-Prussian cyan range; a more magenta pigment like PV19 (quinacridone rose) works better with blues in that hue range.

Now I'm off ahead with a mine sweeper, watching for mines... if my supposition that your printing inks are providing some adherence to your surface turns out to be founded and a straight gum layer doesn't stick well (for the colors that you can't find in the relief inks) I'm sure you've noticed that you can buy a tube of the transparent base for the relief inks separately.

For whatever it's worth,
Katharine

Katherine:

Wow - great intel. I'm glad I caught this before I turned off my computer for the day. I think the local store has just WN and Grumbacher so I think I'll try your suggestion about backing off on the pthalo before I order from D.S. Thank you!

p.s. Also: The ink set came with pthalo green and carbazole violet. I might get courageous and try mixing some combinations. Nothing to lose

Katherine:

I mixed up two parts pt blue and one part violet (from the relief ink set). A wash on plain Fabriano looks very pretty. I tried to change the perm red with the other colors in the ink set, but that didn't seem to work as well. For now, I'm going to try to work around the contraints of the perm red and rhodonite combination.

I'm getting ready to make a new batch of paper with a variety of k-layer negatives. Then, I'm going walkabout for a few days. I only have one other K10 file that I think I could look at long enough to work through, so I'm off to collect pretty pictures. I'm getting a faint glimmer of the kind of digital file that will work best for all this, but right now it's hit and miss. I wish someone else were working AgGel, too. It's been fun dabbling in gum. Exchanging ideas and getting the straight poop from someone who's been there and knows what they are doing is what community is about. Thank you, yet again.

Now, I'm going to indulge in a quiet, tasteful whine: I wish more people were working the handcrafted silver gelatin paper. (or if you are, speak up!). I know that the people who took Ron Mowrey's first workshop seemed excited and committed, but no one followed through (that I know of). By accident or by design, Ron has made the whole thing seem well-nigh impossible for mere mortals. Let me assure you, I'm as mortal as they come and you don't have to have Kodak's library next to your keyboard to make emulsions.

My husband, who's as big a geek as I am, but a software geek and a male, says I don't get it. APUGers just want to talk about things; the more impossible they seem the better. I blew it by hinting that making paper could actually be done, thus forcing the silver gelatin emulsion threads into ever greater visions of the fantastic. Maybe...but geez, what a waste of time. Unfortunately, APUG still has a lock on most of the dialogue on the non-digital aspects of the processes. I would like to encourage anyone who is interested in making their own b&w paper to start talking about it here on hybrid. I'm afraid the information coming out of APUG is misleading at the best. Well, enough of that. The day is still young.

Walkabout ho!
Happy photo'ing to all.
d

dwross said:

Katherine:

I mixed up two parts pt blue and one part violet (from the relief ink set). A wash on plain Fabriano looks very pretty. I tried to change the perm red with the other colors in the ink set, but that didn't seem to work as well.

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Yes, that's predictable from the reflectance curves; that pigment, if it's PR 170, isn't going to "play well with others," because it doesn't reflect light in any other part of the spectrum but red.

For now, I'm going to try to work around the contraints of the perm red and rhodonite combination.

Walkabout ho!
Happy photo'ing to all.
d

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Denise, I'm wondering how important it is to you to achieve a precisely accurate color reproduction. Understand that I don't attach any particular value significance to reproducing colors accurately; I think the interesting, imprecise colors that one gets using different pigment combinations are one of the special benefits of printing in gum, and I personally prefer color renditions that are somewhat impressionistic rather than realistically accurate. I am delighted with the color combinations you're trying out, and I think you may come up with something more interesting this way than if you pursued a route that was more likely to produce an accurate color reproduction. My 2cents... happy walking about.