The Carbon - Platinum Combo!

per volquartz · Aug 26, 2009

2 for the price of one!!!

A unique 2 day workshop combining two alternate processes, presented by two teachers, Jim Fitzgerald (Carbon printing) and Per Volquartz (Platinum printing).
It will take place in Pasadena, California on February 20 - 21.
Tuition, including all materials (bring negs. for contact printing please) = $165.00 per person; absolute max = 12 people.
The participants will be divided into two groups.
On day 1 group A will do Carbon printing, group B Platinum
On day 2 group A will do Platinum printing while group B will work with the Carbon process.

Light lunch, snacks and refreshments are included.

To sign up please email Per Volquartz at
volquartz (at) volquartz.com

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sanking · Aug 26, 2009

Sounds like a great opportunity to get hands-on experience with these two beautiful processes.

Sandy King

Vaughn · Aug 26, 2009

What unusual pairing of processes! And an interesting way to present the individual processes. It should be a wonderful experience!

Vaughn

Curt · Aug 27, 2009

Per, I sent a pm and hope to be one of the 12 present and ready to learn this coming February.

Best,
Curt

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 27, 2009

Curt said:
Per, I sent a pm and hope to be one of the 12 present and ready to learn this coming February.

Best,
Curt

Curt, it will be great to meet you and I am looking forward to teaching the carbon transfer process.

It is very nice to know that the first two posts on this thread were from my carbon mentors, Sandy and Vaughn. Thanks for the encouragement and for teaching and inspiring me in carbon transfer.

I think it will be a nice pairing of these two beautiful processes.

Jim

Curt · Aug 27, 2009

Jim, thank you, it will be an exciting time for me, the more I read and hear about Carbon prints the more I want to give it a try myself. I'm really at a loss for words, it really is exciting and I'm looking forward the experience. I'm gong to Tonopah in November too, it's a good time for me to get out and reinvent myself.

Best
Curt

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 27, 2009

Curt, I may try to get out to Tonopah for a couple of days just to say hi and visit the lens mine! I'm not signed up up I can always drop by. You know, I just happened to be in the neighborhood! If i can make it I'll be sure to bring some carbon prints.

Jim

Curt · Aug 27, 2009

Jim, that would be great, the last time I was in the area I took the scenic route around or through Tonopah and ended up in Yosemite from Las Vegas late at night, we camped in the park and it was between rain and snow, really cold out. Hot or cold it all depends on where you are down there.

Curt

athanasius80 · Aug 28, 2009

Email sent.

Jeremy · Aug 28, 2009

I thought you meant you were doing carbon over platinum or platinum over carbon

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 28, 2009

Jeremy said:
I thought you meant you were doing carbon over platinum or platinum over carbon

No, two separate process in one workshop. So really a two for one deal. Our economic stimulus package the photographic community.

Jim

Kimberly Anderson · Aug 29, 2009

+1

Jeremy said:
I thought you meant you were doing carbon over platinum or platinum over carbon

Perry Way · Aug 29, 2009

Email sent. I'm lacking 8 x 10 negs for contact printing as I'm only up to Medium Format right now. Would love to join this workshop but need to get my hands on a few negs for contact printing. Anyone interested in lending some or <gasp> selling some to me?

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 29, 2009

1SharpMonkey said:
Email sent. I'm lacking 8 x 10 negs for contact printing as I'm only up to Medium Format right now. Would love to join this workshop but need to get my hands on a few negs for contact printing. Anyone interested in lending some or <gasp> selling some to me?

Not to worry about negatives. I am going to bring some of my 8x10 negatives for those that need to use them so they can learn the process. For my carbon printing workshop 8x10 would be ideal and 5x7 or 4x5 are okay. Those with digital negatives are okay also. This workshop will give you the fundamentals of the process and show you the potential of carbon transfer. Once you get some hands on with this process and understand the mechanics then the real fun begins. We need to walk before we can run.

Jim

Perry Way · Aug 30, 2009

Jim Fitzgerald said:
Not to worry about negatives. I am going to bring some of my 8x10 negatives for those that need to use them so they can learn the process. For my carbon printing workshop 8x10 would be ideal and 5x7 or 4x5 are okay. Those with digital negatives are okay also. This workshop will give you the fundamentals of the process and show you the potential of carbon transfer. Once you get some hands on with this process and understand the mechanics then the real fun begins. We need to walk before we can run.

Jim

Yes, thanks for sharing this Jim! I'm on board! Per sent me back a message earlier today and said to bring my medium format negs and appropriate digital negs could be made for purposes of instruction. To be honest I don't really care which negs I'd be using, getting hands on instruction from masters and so nearby (I'm in San Luis Obispo) is just awesome. Either way I'll bring what I have and maybe I've got some good candidates already. For the record though, what constitutes a better negative for carbon printing? Would it be the more contrasting ones?

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 30, 2009

1SharpMonkey said:
Yes, thanks for sharing this Jim! I'm on board! Per sent me back a message earlier today and said to bring my medium format negs and appropriate digital negs could be made for purposes of instruction. To be honest I don't really care which negs I'd be using, getting hands on instruction from masters and so nearby (I'm in San Luis Obispo) is just awesome. Either way I'll bring what I have and maybe I've got some good candidates already. For the record though, what constitutes a better negative for carbon printing? Would it be the more contrasting ones?

For the purpose of carbon transfer and the way I work I try to go for a more contrasty negative. I think an important part of learning carbon transfer is seeing the negative and the resulting print. Contrasty negatives with textured areas work best in my opinion, but I have been able to produce very nice prints with negatives of low contrast. I do develop my negatives in Pyro but if you are using non Pyro developers that is fine. More contrast is better with traditional negatives. One would develop about 20% more or greater depending on the scene. A negative with a DR of 1.8-2.2 is a nice range for traditional negatives. If you are in the SLO area I hope you have checked out the Los Osos Oaks preserve. Some great Oaks in there and I will have some prints from that area to show.

Jim

Perry Way · Aug 30, 2009

Jim Fitzgerald said:
For the purpose of carbon transfer and the way I work I try to go for a more contrasty negative. I think an important part of learning carbon transfer is seeing the negative and the resulting print. Contrasty negatives with textured areas work best in my opinion, but I have been able to produce very nice prints with negatives of low contrast. I do develop my negatives in Pyro but if you are using non Pyro developers that is fine. More contrast is better with traditional negatives. One would develop about 20% more or greater depending on the scene. A negative with a DR of 1.8-2.2 is a nice range for traditional negatives. If you are in the SLO area I hope you have checked out the Los Osos Oaks preserve. Some great Oaks in there and I will have some prints from that area to show.

Jim

Fantastic. After I asked this question last night I spent about an hour looking for more prints and writeups on carbon transfer. It seemed to me I had my head on straight (for a change, eh?). And while I was intuiting this process, guess what came to my mind first? <dinger sound> The massive 1000 year old Oak tree as you enter the Los Osos Oaks preserve. How do you like that? Am I psychotic or what? err.. I mean psychic. Bad joke attempt aside, I've been to Los Osos Oaks recently about 5 times this last two weeks. It is afterall only about 5 miles from my doorstep, and I love Live Oak trees so very much. The deciduous ones you see in central and east Texas and east of that to the Atlantic are a far cry different with their vertical rise and spindly horizontal branches that break off in autumn winds. Live Oak varieties a low lying much of their lives and develop an almost grotesque twisting and protruding array of branches. Anyway back to negatives.. I have a fist full of negatives from Los Osos Oaks preserve and due to the high and thick canopy of dense leaves they are all predominately dark toned. But there's a lot of detail in the negs. And I thought last night as I perused my negs that I'd bring them with me for certain.

Speaking of Oaks, if you're a fan of them you might like this.. Yesterday I was out on the Big Sur coast snapping off a couple rolls through my RB67, and I came upon a very interesting thicket of those Coastal Live Oaks. I've passed by it a thousand times but never did see them until I was out looking for interesting shots. Having shot the Ocean and rocks and waves so many times It was time to find other things. I'm sure you've seen them before but maybe not knowing they were a special variation of Oak. They are especially low slung and grow wide.. very wide.. and when they grow in a thicket they take on a whole different look than the bumpy bursts of green cumulonimbus clouds on a grassy hillside of their larger Live Oak cousins. I spent about 45 minutes trying to get a really advantageous angle to take some shots of this one thicket, but every angle I got to while climbing over barbed wires and thick grasses with foxtails and barbs was not the one I saw from the road. The best angle was directly from Highway 1. I wasn't so brave. That part of the road people are going upwards of 65 mph. Still though I got some excellent shots, but just not the ones I wanted.

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 30, 2009

I suggest that anyone interested in carbon transfer ( seriously) do some research on line as I did. It will help you understand the process and get the most out of the hands on. This is true for the Platinum people also. Once you get the hands on that you need it then becomes making the process your own.

The Oaks are a favorite of mine. Do bring some of the negatives you have as I would love to see them. I have several that are dark and print well in carbon. When the light streams through the canopy it is amazing the detail you can hold. I hope to have some new images to show at the workshop. As to having your head on straight , well at least you do! I'm still working on it! Psychotic or Psychic it is all good to me. Please bring both to the workshop.

Jim

Curt · Aug 30, 2009

I've been doing some online searching too and have a folder "Carbon Transfer" in my favorites. I was reading about the two types, single and double transfer, it appears that single can be less sharp because the negative has to be placed in contact with the emulsion side out as to have the image correctly orientated. Double transfer eliminates this? The light source, bulb type, has an overall effect on the final print also. Would you suggest a book to read prior to the workshop?

Curt

sanking · Aug 30, 2009

Curt said:
I've been doing some online searching too and have a folder "Carbon Transfer" in my favorites. I was reading about the two types, single and double transfer, it appears that single can be less sharp because the negative has to be placed in contact with the emulsion side out as to have the image correctly orientated. Double transfer eliminates this? The light source, bulb type, has an overall effect on the final print also. Would you suggest a book to read prior to the workshop?

Curt

Single tranfer is considerably less complicated than double transfer, and relief effect is also a lot more enhanced with single transfer. These days many people print carbon with digital negatives, and we just flip the image file so that the orientation is correct.

If you have not already seen it let me suggest my article on carbon printing at the alternative photography site.

http://www.alternativephotography.com/articles/art110.html

Sandy

Jim Fitzgerald · Aug 30, 2009

Curt said:
I've been doing some online searching too and have a folder "Carbon Transfer" in my favorites. I was reading about the two types, single and double transfer, it appears that single can be less sharp because the negative has to be placed in contact with the emulsion side out as to have the image correctly orientated. Double transfer eliminates this? The light source, bulb type, has an overall effect on the final print also. Would you suggest a book to read prior to the workshop?

Curt

Curt, Sandy's advice is sound. Sandy has been printing carbon for some time and is one of the masters in my book. I happen to love the process and have learned a lot about it. Sandy has an article on unblinkingeye.com and a self published book that is very good. There are carbon forums and discussion groups on yahoo and B&S.

Single transfer is the best process to start with. You print emulsion to emulsion and with a good contact frame or a vacuum frame you will not see any loss of sharpness. If you do it may be slight. BLB bulbs may be less sharp than a plate burner but again it is subjective. The image will be reversed so if you have some writing in your image it will be backwards. You do retain the relief with the single transfer process and I will be teaching the single transfer process. For the purpose of learning the process all this will be discussed.

Jim

Curt · Aug 31, 2009

Single transfer is considerably less complicated than double transfer, and relief effect is also a lot more enhanced with single transfer. These days many people print carbon with digital negatives, and we just flip the image file so that the orientation is correct.

Thanks Sandy, that makes a lot of sense for the orientation using a digital negative, I was looking at the HID for starting out.

http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Light/light.html

This bulb is one listed in the article and is readily available.

http://www.lightbulbsrus.com/user/productdetail.php?pid=672

Vaughn · Aug 31, 2009

Curt, I do single transfers. I decide what, when ,why and whatever I am to photograph, knowing that the print will be orientated in the reverse of the negative. So it is not a matter of the image being orientated incorrectly/correctly, but intsead being orientated the way I envision it to be. This allows me to print emulsion to emulsion, and retain sharpness.

Raised relief is a characteristic of the process that I like to incorporate into my images, and this means that I use single transfer -- as a double transfer tends to hide the relief. As a fluid and flexible process, it seems like everything, from bulb type to pigment type, from sensitizer concentration to final support, affects the final outcome (contrast, sharpness, print color, raised relief, etc).

Being consistant and keeping records allows one to repeat the successes. Sometimes "mistakes" can lead one to better images, so it can be nice to know what went wrong so that one can do it again! Not knowing one could get raised relief, I noticed a slight slight relief on my early wet prints -- then the gelatin would dry flat. So I tweaked the process until I could keep significant relief after drying the print. Just one way to work the process.

Modern Carbon Printing by Luis R Nadeau (1986) is the "Bible". I bought a copy long after I began carbon printing. It would have saved some time to have had it earlier! The trouble is, is that it is out of print. A copy is for sale through Amazon.com -- for $247. I should have bought a few of them at $16 each when I have the chance! Christopher James' The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes the second edition has a good chapter (new) on Carbon Printing -- it is a good book to have in one's library. Dick Sullivan and Sandy King both have carbon manuals available.

The Carbon Printing Forum http://bostick-sullivan.invisionzone.com/ is a great place to ask questions about anything related to carbon printing. If no one knows the answer, there is enough brain-storming going on to figure it out. Sandy King has also started a Yahoo forum.

Vaughn

Curt · Aug 31, 2009

Vaughn, thank you for the wealth of information, I'll look for the 247 book and keep reading. I know many questions will be answered as I go, I wonder if it's easier to start with B&S tissue. It seems that Formulary has a DEA requirement for select chemicals and B&S doesn't have that stipulation on their web site. I'm going to slowly bring myself up to starter before the workshop and have fun doing it. I have to look at my negatives, a Half Dome on the left while looking at it from the lodge won't do.

Jim, the relief or texture of the print is of great appeal to me and is one characteristic that initially got me interested. Making the tissue is of course going to be the most valuable part of the process, the ability to control the final color, relief and final look is exciting.

Curt

Vaughn · Aug 31, 2009

B&S Carbon Tissue is a nice way to start. Besides the standard tissue, they have a thick tissue for raised relief (though you would have to call them to see if any is available and to order it). And warm black and neutral black tissues. You could get a handle on the process quicker with the B&S tissue, and know where you would want to go with your own tissue if/when you go that way later on.

If you find a combination of tissue and type of negative that is just right, being able to print a consistant portfolio would be easier with a consistant tissue -- which is another way B&S tissue works well.

Once one has worked long enough, one most likely would drift towards making one's own tissue -- for more control/options or perhaps just to have fun experimenting.

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The image linked to above is reversed. Yosemite Falls is backwards as is the writing on the sign to the left. With the aid of a magnifying glass, one can read the sign in the print -- thus the name of the image is the same as the sign -- "Crowning Glory". Reversing Yosemite Falls is a little easier to get away with than Half Dome! And I hope no one tries to use one of my carbons of the face of El Capitan as a climbing guide!

Vaughn

The Carbon - Platinum Combo!

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