Learning from Master Platinum Printer Irving Penn

[Davec101]

I just had a thought, maybe for the first layer if you print the shadows 50% lighter than normal, by the second/third layer, one will have increased the dmax whilst still protecting the shadows in a round about sort of way.

 

[Ben Altman]

Hi Dave,

Your experiments are great. Thanks for sharing. I assume you are printing with digital negs? If so, why not profile the whole multi-hit process to give a full range of nicely spaced tones with one negative? Then you could get at least close by doing WYSIWIG adjustment of your shadow tones on screen. Or am I missing something?

Best, Ben

 

[Bob Carnie]

In split printing for silver , I always make the main exposure lighter and softer.

I just had a thought, maybe for the first layer if you print the shadows 50% lighter than normal, by the second/third layer, one will have increased the dmax whilst still protecting the shadows in a round about sort of way.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Ben

though in theory this makes sense, in practice the process itself being a second generation has falloff issues and I believe this is what Dave is trying to control.
for example why split print in Silver?,, basically it allows one to put tone in place that a single exposure cannot achieve.
Why flash a paper in highlights? well if you are beaching/toning there needs to be something in place to bleach to mimic tone in the final presentation.

Some processes cannot in a single hit produce the tonality that I think Dave is trying to achieve. therefore the multiple negs/hits.

Bob

Hi Dave,

Your experiments are great. Thanks for sharing. I assume you are printing with digital negs? If so, why not profile the whole multi-hit process to give a full range of nicely spaced tones with one negative? Then you could get at least close by doing WYSIWIG adjustment of your shadow tones on screen. Or am I missing something?

Best, Ben

 

[Davec101]

Okay after the third hit the print is nearly where I want it to be (see below), its still not perfect as with most experiments, however it has the tonal depth I was looking for that i could not achieve with 1 hit, whilst still keeping that dark shadow portion I masked in hit two visible and not muddy, which I wanted to test.

Below in a single scan shows the single hit on the left and the multilayered (x3) print on the right. Where the single hit print seems rather flat the mulit-layered has a sense of three dimensionality to it. Still more work to do but showing promise.

 

[Davec101]

In split printing for silver , I always make the main exposure lighter and softer.

Okay that makes sense, its defiantly something I want to try as it would avoid masking in hit 2.

 

[Davec101]

Hi Dave,

Your experiments are great. Thanks for sharing. I assume you are printing with digital negs? If so, why not profile the whole multi-hit process to give a full range of nicely spaced tones with one negative? Then you could get at least close by doing WYSIWIG adjustment of your shadow tones on screen. Or am I missing something?

Best, Ben

Bob answered your question for me really. In essence at the moment I am attempting to harness the density gains that are possible through multi-layering platinum/palladium salts without losing shadow detail. Essentially if you were to print the same negative 3 times your shadows might start to block up, this test was just to show that you can benefit from the density gains and keep the shadow detail by selective masking. As has also been suggested planning ahead and printing your shadows lighter than normal in your first hit may negate masking in the second hit.

No single hit of platinum/palladium will give you a density of 1.7+ but multi-layering will, if you read the tests on the previous pages. Its still its early stages and needs a lot more testing to work out the most effective workflow.

 

[Bob Carnie]

keep it going Dave, I think you are on to something here.

 

[Ben Altman]

Thanks, Bob and Dave. I've been following the thread, so I understand the reason for multiple hits, but I'm not entirely convinced that multiple negs are needed - will have to try it when I have a moment. I'm thinking that traditional split printing is done mainly to get around limitations in the characteristics of the analogue materials? But maybe there are some limits to what a digital negative can do also. Be interesting to find them.

Ben

 

[PVia]

I'd like to know exactly why Penn used multiple negatives. We know he wanted a depth and richness that he couldn't get with a single hit, but was that because of the limitations of using a film neg, which is not as infinitely adjustable as a digital neg with local contrast manipulation? I bet it was...

A lot of Penn's platinum work is extremely contrasty as are many of his silver prints. The Small Trades exhibit at the Getty last year was a marvel to look at. Sometimes a tradesman's clothes were black-black and their faces near-white and it all worked perfectly with luscious midtones.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Ben

At the end of the day , all processes have their failures, what we see on screen will always be more than what we can lay on paper, multiple hits will get us closer but frankly, I have never seen a process that does not have its limitations, even with profiles and multiple hit prints.
these are the small details that Dave is working on , and to a large part is what drives me crazy about printing .
I think Mr Penn was very concerned about this and is why he followed this route.

Thanks, Bob and Dave. I've been following the thread, so I understand the reason for multiple hits, but I'm not entirely convinced that multiple negs are needed - will have to try it when I have a moment. I'm thinking that traditional split printing is done mainly to get around limitations in the characteristics of the analogue materials? But maybe there are some limits to what a digital negative can do also. Be interesting to find them.

Ben

 

[Davec101]

Thanks, Bob and Dave. I've been following the thread, so I understand the reason for multiple hits, but I'm not entirely convinced that multiple negs are needed - will have to try it when I have a moment. I'm thinking that traditional split printing is done mainly to get around limitations in the characteristics of the analogue materials? But maybe there are some limits to what a digital negative can do also. Be interesting to find them.

Ben

Its not really about highlighting the limits a digital negative system, I think fundamentally its about chemistry and how you can layer platinum/palladium salts to achieve a higher maximum density. I have not reported this yet as i have not double checked it but I tested Arches Platine with a forth layer and this is where the gains end. I would like to find a paper that would keep increasing in density after the third layer.

 

[Loris Medici]

How about three layers and waxing (or similar surface treatment) later?

(BTW, I mean something that would decrease surface scattering, "BUT w/o" making the surface too glossy - Could be a heavy hardened gelatin coating too...)

Regards,
Loris.

 

[Davec101]

I'd like to know exactly why Penn used multiple negatives. We know he wanted a depth and richness that he couldn't get with a single hit, but was that because of the limitations of using a film neg, which is not as infinitely adjustable as a digital neg with local contrast manipulation? I bet it was...

A lot of Penn's platinum work is extremely contrasty as are many of his silver prints. The Small Trades exhibit at the Getty last year was a marvel to look at. Sometimes a tradesman's clothes were black-black and their faces near-white and it all worked perfectly with luscious midtones.

I spoke to Richard Sullivan (of Bostick & Sullivan) a few weeks back on what his thoughts were on Penn’s technique using multiple layers of platinum sensitizers in succession and he was of the opinion that Penn was at the time using some quite difficult negatives to print in platinum (specifically colour ones) and thus required a separate number of inter-negatives to be created to achieve the desired result.

If this is true Penn would have seen the gains in dmax from mutilple hits and he would have taken advantage of them. If I get the go ahead from the conservators at the V&A tommorow i will be able to take some readings from the 'Harlequin' Penn platinum print, which might shed some light on all of this. The conservators seem to be a bit apprehensive of me getting my hands on the print for some reason!

 

[Davec101]

How about three layers and waxing (or similar surface treatment) later?

(BTW, I mean something that would decrease surface scattering, "BUT w/o" making the surface too glossy - Could be a heavy hardened gelatin coating too...)

Regards,
Loris.

I have yet to master waxing, thats something i need to try. I have some renaissance wax but always have a problem with getting an even coat with platinum prints. Purhaps with the paper being on aluminium it might help.

 

[Ben Altman]

Does anyone have an idea what the physics of the increased DMax might be? Is it simply that the extra layers cover up the base paper better, or is there an effect in the micro structure of the deposited metal? Theory indicates that the effect of sequential layers of a light filter is multiplicative rather than additive (i.e. log densities add), but it's hard to imagine this sort of multiple coating on a microscopically very rough surface as optically sequential to any large degree.

With some quick tests I did with POP Pd a few weeks back it seemed that one effect is that the extra layer allowed more exposure without solarization, but I'm not sure if that's so relevant to Dave's DOP Pd/Pt mixture.

Ben

 

[Davec101]

Here is another print i am working/testing at the moment which has a full tonal range to work with (single scan). Making masks for this is going to be a bit more challenging. Single coat on the left multi-layered (x2) on the right.

 

[Davec101]

Does anyone have an idea what the physics of the increased DMax might be? Is it simply that the extra layers cover up the base paper better, or is there an effect in the micro structure of the deposited metal? Theory indicates that the effect of sequential layers of a light filter is multiplicative rather than additive (i.e. log densities add), but it's hard to imagine this sort of multiple coating on a microscopically very rough surface as optically sequential to any large degree.

With some quick tests I did with POP Pd a few weeks back it seemed that one effect is that the extra layer allowed more exposure without solarization, but I'm not sure if that's so relevant to Dave's DOP Pd/Pt mixture.

Ben

Establishing the physics/chemistry behind all of this is important, this also might help to identify which papers would see the best gains.

 

[marko_trebusak]

Hi Dave,

what is the separation of the shadows with multiple hits? Is it posible to see shadows separated the same way as with single hit? I'm asking, because with the samples you provide, I can see increasing density through the photo (except for the stairs, where you made a mask).

Cheers,
Marko

 

[Davec101]

Hi Dave,

what is the separation of the shadows with multiple hits? Is it posible to see shadows separated the same way as with single hit? I'm asking, because with the samples you provide, I can see increasing density through the photo (except for the stairs, where you made a mask).

Cheers,
Marko

Hi Mark

Yes it would be possible i would have had to create a mask to protect those areas in the second and third hit. This probably was not the best image to illustrate the effects of multi-layering as I was aiming for a personal aesthetic. An image I am working on at the moment with a wider range of tones will show the effects better.

 

[Davec101]

I was able to get a to the V&A museum yesterday, I was intending on taking some density readings from one particular Penn print (Harlequin Dress). Unfortunately the conservators would not let the meter touch the print. I thought this might happen so plan B was to visually compare the multilayer test print that I had created which I have dmax readings for, and the Penn print. The good thing about this particular Penn print is that it has absolute black values to compare against.

The four of us (the assistant curator of photography at the V&A, a conservator, my friend and me) visually compared the black values of the Penn print and the multilayer test print. To our eyes the dmax of the Penn print was at the lower left hand corner of the harlequin dress. We all agreed that the dmax of the Penn print corresponded well to the values that were achieved with the third layer of the multilayer test print, which dmax values are in excess of 1.7. The curator thought the Penn print might actually have a slightly higher dmax value. (The images below are really to illustrative how we were comparing, obviously the human eye is going to be significantly better at judging density than a photo can reproduce)

What can we conclude from this, well I believe what we have established based on visual evidence is that Penn was achieving a dmax for this particular print that no single hit could reach, moreover it was likely to have been as a result of multi-layering of platinum/palladium salts. I would have liked to have taken actual readings as this would have been more conclusive however this was not possible. The next few tests I want to do are to establish exactly what is going on when you multilayer platinum/palladium salts, print a detailed step wedge with multi-layering and experiment with some of the Papers Penn used, such as Rives BFK.

 

[Loris Medici]

Kudos for the perseverance and thanks much for the trouble of reporting Dave...

Regards,
Loris.

 

[Davec101]

Below shows a working sheet of Penns for the Five Okapa Warriors platinum print scanned from Platinum Prints by Sarah Greenough. I have never really looked at this working sheet with any great depth until now. Its quite difficult to interpret some of the hand writing, there seems to be mentions of under printing One second printing on Rives BFK, later I will crop some the terms that look most significant. I presume the numbers are referring to drop counts /ml in some instances. Food for thought anyway.

 

[Davec101]

Of interest to some although not entirely relevant to the thread is what i just found this on the Christies website, it seems that earlier this year there was a large sale of Penn prints, there were platinum prints in the auction that i had never seen, such as a few self portraits. Its interesting to read some of the inscriptions. The prints were given by Irving Penn to Patricia McCabe on special occasions such as birthdays and Christmas’s. Patricia was Penn's administrative assistant for 30 years who passed away in 2004.

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Also I found the first mention I have seen of a platinum/iridium print, at last!

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[Davec101]

Here are the 100% crops of the working notes that I find most intriguing but have yet to decipher.