Liquid Light

[Carnie Bob]

I am interested in the properties of this material, is the emulsion stable like silver gelatin properly fixed prints, how easy is it to coat on watercolour paper.

 

[retina_restoration]

I am interested in the properties of this material, is the emulsion stable like silver gelatin properly fixed prints, how easy is it to coat on watercolour paper.

Hi Bob. When I was printing for Deb Samuel in the mid-90s, we used it quite a bit to print a series of her pieces. We made really big prints (like 30X40 inch pieces) and it was reasonably easy to work with. We coated on standard watercolor paper (Fabriano or maybe Arches?) and working off of 6x6cm negatives it was fairly slow to expose (minutes, not seconds). It required long wash times, of course, and a hypo clearing agent was essential. As far as I know, it is as stable as any other silver gelatin process, as long as it is washed properly to remove fix and fix byproducts. I should ask Deb how those prints have fared over the past 30 years.

Because it was labor intensive to produce a print with this material, I recall we rarely made more than 3 prints in a day, most often just 2. Getting the Liquid Light to just the right temperature for coating required some practice, and working in a WARM darkroom helped achieve an even coating on paper, especially as we did really large prints.

 

[Rick A]

I have a bottle of it that I've been diddling with, mostly coating glass plates with mixed results. Retina Resto is correct about dialing in the correct temp to spread it, a bit of a PITA.

 

[Peter Schrager]

Why bother when im willing to teach u how to make your own pop paper . Darkrooms. Nah just use a UV lightsource. The other part is that its cheap. For $20 worth of silver nitrate i can coat about 25 8x10 sheets.

 

[Carnie Bob]

Why bother when im willing to teach u how to make your own pop paper . Darkrooms. Nah just use a UV lightsource. The other part is that its cheap. For $20 worth of silver nitrate i can coat about 25 8x10 sheets.

We will do this Peter, I am working on a project for my business where we multiple coat over many processes as base images, so far gum over pd and gum over cyanotype have been really successful. This sample is too dark when I post it here for sanitiy sakes assume the white background is white and everything falls into place

 

[Dan Dozer]

Hi Bob - Liquid Emulsion from either FOMA or Rollei give normally better results than Liquid Light (the contrast consistency is normally better). It's easy to coat the paper but you need a high quality heavy weight paper. What you use for PT/PD works fine. FOMA is a little less expensive than Rollei, but Rollei does offer a variable contrast mix (for a higher price). I've been working with FOMA for close to 10 years now primarily making Bromoil prints so I know a whole lot about it. The big thing you will find is that you have to figure out how to master the hand coating process and get rid of the brush strokes in the emulsion. It gets really frustrating. I found that switching to coating with a glass rod is completely more successful and you can get a pretty much perfect coating nearly every time and no brush strokes. Note that coating with a glass rod with liquid emulsion is completely different from coating Pt/Pd with a glass rod. If you want to try it, get either Denise Ross's book on Handmade Silver Emulsion or (a little self promotion here) get my little book on bromoil printing "The New Bromoil Process". I go over the glass rod coating in detail.

Commercial liquid emulsion gives you a great silver base image in your prints and it is very archival. It does have a shelf life, but I've used it a year over expiration date it worked fine. You do need to store it in a refrigerator. Prints from it look different from conventional silver paper and have more depth to them if that makes sense. Many times, I've made a large 16 x 20 liquid emulsion print intending to use it for Bromoil, but have a real hard time bleaching out the visible silver because the print looks so good all by itself.

Happy to do a ZOOM call if you want more info. BTW - I always remember the things you taught us in the printing workshop you did many years ago when you came out to California at Matt Blais's house.

Dan Dozer