The Challenge of Creating Large Alternative Prints

[Loris Medici]

As an addition to Sandy's comment: Diluting the thiourea gold toner 1+1 with water works perfectly well too. (I mean you can get pretty neutral results with it...) That's how I use it; one shot, diluted 1+1... (Or even 1+2 in some cases!) It takes very little gold to provide good protection, to considerably darken the shadows (better dmax) and also to change the hue to neutral, or even cold...

Regards,
Loris.

 

[sanking]

As an addition to Sandy's comment: Diluting the thiourea gold toner 1+1 with water works perfectly well too. (I mean you can get pretty neutral results with it...) That's how I use it; one shot, diluted 1+1... (Or even 1+2 in some cases!) It takes very little gold to provide good protection, to considerably darken the shadows (better dmax) and also to change the hue to neutral, or even cold...

Regards,
Loris.

I would also mention that the amount of gold toner required varies a lot with the type of print being toned. A print with a lot of highlight details requires very little toner, while one with a lot of deep shadow area requires a lot.

So unless you just can not live without brush strokes I would advise masking off the print area when sensitizing to avoid useless shadow areas that will devour your expensive toner.

Sandy

 

[donbga]

also to change the hue to neutral, or even cold...

Not necessarily a good thing IMO, however gold toning doesn't always result in a neutral tone.

FWIW, Sandy was kind enough to show his gold toned VDBs at a gathering a few weeks ago and they were really stunning. I look forward to reading his upcoming article.

Don

 

[Loris Medici]

Not necessarily a good thing IMO, however gold toning doesn't always result in a neutral tone.

Yep, higher dilutions tend to give "comparatively" warmer results. I've also noticed that if you expose the paper when it's relatively more humid (almost "a la" print out pd), you get a colder print color, which also naturally affects the result you get after toning...

FWIW, Sandy was kind enough to show his gold toned VDBs at a gathering a few weeks ago and they were really stunning.

I look forward to reading his upcoming article.

I'm certain, have seen nothing but perfect stuff when it comes to Sandy.

Me too!

Regards,
Loris.

 

[sanking]

I'm certain, have seen nothing but perfect stuff when it comes to Sandy.
Regards,
Loris.

That is only because I never let it get out of my house!!

Sandy

 

[Loris Medici]

 

[Davec101]

Continuing the theme of printing larger alternative prints, yesterday I printed one of my clients images (Dead Link Removed ) in Vandyke brown and toned it with platinum/palladium. Final size 34x27 inches, see below, 10x8 inch print shown on the right. My thanks to Sandy King for not only recommending this process but also his guidance. It can produce wonderful prints when toned with platinum or palladium and I look forward to using it in future as it should make the progression to large platinum/palladium prints less of an ordeal.

 

[Ben Altman]

Hi All,

I've been setting up and calibrating the Gold-toned Vandyke process to make large prints - and hit an interesting snag with my exposure measurement when I tried the first one. The large paper's white border comes to the edge of the vacuum frame and the reflected light from it fools the light integrator into shortening the exposure - by a lot. This is with a big homebuilt bank of BLB tubes and an Olec sensor.

I've crudely solved the problem by moving the sensor around to the front where it looks directly at the middle of the tube on the edge of the bank. Even then I had to make a little snoot out of black paper to cut out stray light. This gives me stable exposures but worries me a bit because it depends on the one tube behaving like the rest. Also that reflected light does do some exposure work, so it would be good to have a better way to average what's really going on.

Anyone else noticed this problem and/or thought up a more elegant solution?

The VDB process seems to be very responsive to exposure time, by the way.

Best, Ben