The technical discussion is above my head.My second fish gelatin print:
Would a FAC substitute like the one used in Mike Ware's Simple Cyanotype be useful in processes such as this? The substitute has some Ammonium Nitrate in it though.
Bob, wouldn't the dichromate in the gum layer harm the silver? Are you going to gold tone the POP print before the gum layer?
thanks for this observation - at this point I have had no issues with the AD harming the Pd layer or Cyanotype layer, I will watch out for this possible problem, are you suggesting that
the AD would hurt, I have not done this yet btw.
I have seen hand coloured with pigment over salt prints which are magnificant, but not sure how a silver layer on paper will react to the AD component in my multiple gum overs.
I can do commercial bw matt print and try putting gum over top , this would be critical for me to understand before I go down the wormhole of gum over silver.
it turns the black silver into charged negative ions
But. While this image definitely does not have true colors, I like them a lot. Something between Technicolor and soviet-era color magazines.
Congratulations. Hope you can reproduce the exact process leading to this.
How colors are reproduced is an interesting discussion. Due to the specific pigments and the particularities of the process I don't think that a perfect color reproduction is possible. However, if the process is carefully respected a certain intended look could be obtained with reasonable repeatability.Color wise my trials more classic with out PS
That'd be something. Negative silver ions. I figure you could pretty well get a Nobel prize for that.
But more to the point - you're right that dichromate requires a strong acid in order to act as a bleach. We generally use hydrochloric acid to make a rehalogenating bleach (for intensification) or sulfuric acid to make a stripping bleach (no redevelopment possible).
I just did a very quick and small test, and the acidity of an aged gum bichromate solution is not enough to make dichromate into a silver bleach. A drop of 1% dichromate solution mixed with a drop of aged gum does nothing to a strip of developed silver film. I see no bleach action after a few minutes. So I would expect that gum over silver gelatin should work without bleaching the silver image.
How colors are reproduced is an interesting discussion. Due to the specific pigments and the particularities of the process I don't think that a perfect color reproduction is possible. However, if the process is carefully respected a certain intended look could be obtained with reasonable repeatability.
Here are screen captures of the intended image and of scans of the prints:
View attachment 399442View attachment 399441
It goes completely into water and developing solutions 9 times for 15-40 min. and it must completely dry after each immersion. Add to this 11 wet layers of emulsions that must, each of them, dry. Then add processing times, exposures times, time to make the emulsions and apply them and the result is a quite long time.Curious to know how long it takes you to produce one print, not counting the initial R&D of the process.
I have no idea what would be a fair price to ask.
Let's assume a 40-hour work week. Pick your hourly rate. Then add the R&D investment. Then add another margin for the sheer artistic value of a hand-crafted item. So north of $1k.If I am lucky and everything goes as intended it takes me about a week to complete 1 print.
You're welcome. It's of course arbitrary, but what I wanted to do here is (1) create a first data point you could take into consideration and (2) hopefully stimulate you to avoid the trap of too much modesty. In reality, a cost-based approach to pricing is tricky and I doubt it really makes sense for art, so there's a massive pitfall there to begin with. If you value art on the basis of factorial cost, arguably you're not actually valuing it but in fact treating it as a commodity. So there's in my view a rather fundamental issue underlying your question - i.e. how you view your own work: as a craft, or as art. In case of the latter, the price setting may have to be based on entirely different lines of reasoning than my simplistic approach of "cost price plus". You may have to look instead at what other, comparable (go break your teeth on that one!) works of art sell for, what your standing as an artist are, how this particular work fits in your oeuvre, how that oeuvre has developed and is anticipated to develop, etc. etc. In the end, the potential price range would be quite massive, which automatically brings the question whether it's not entirely arbitrary to begin with. I think ultimately that's the case, and I would be tempted to consider a couple of possible price points and 'try them on for size', until you hit a number that seems to make sense to you.
Also: careful with hagglers.
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