Ned's photos with the keyword: salt print

Printed 29 and 30 June, 2018 Quick digi-snaps of some test prints. The top is a plain salt print and the bottom is similar but toned with gold thiocyanate. For whatever reason, this old pinhole paper negative has become my "test" negative... I've probably printed it 200 times. It has bright highlights, a dark foreground, the sky is good for evaluating what highlights will do, and the water is good to see if the "glow" that can happen when using starch is there. It's a long story why, but lately I've decided to really make an effort to print with starch as the binder ( instead of gelatin or plain paper ). I've been working with rice starch and these represent a kind of breakthrough: even coating, enough silver without having to double coat or use too strong silver nitrate solution, and lack of fog. The margins on the right are masked during printing, and only coated 1/2 way across with silver nitrate, so you can compare the brightest white on the print with uncoated paper. On the top print, it is nearly perfect. On the bottom, there is just a hint of a "shadow" but it is very good. More importantly, there are no areas on the prints that are weak because they did not get enough silver nitrate, and there are no streaks or lines from uneven starch coating. Turns out that the kind of rice you get the starch from is very important! By luck I tried basmati rice and it works much better than other kinds of rice or arrowroot. I have a stack of prints of this negative..about 2 or 3 inches high..made in the past couple years. Most were made with various papers + applying arrowroot in different ways, and some with rice starch. Some of them have beautiful tones, but all of them have flaws and problems that make the process unusable. These are the first two that really worked! Because our cupboard only had basmati rice in it. These were made by floating the paper on dilute rice water with 2% kosher salt, drying, and then brush coating with silver nitrate, drying and exposing. Since it worked so well, yesterday I prepared a batch of larger paper to make more prints with. I've got one going right now as I type this... :)

Salted paper print of a calotype , toned with gold-SCN. Printed 10 February 2018

Oaks at Ragle Ranch Park in Sonoma County, California. Printed 3 February 2018 Salted paper print of a calotype . 7x11 inch image on 9x13 Strathmore 500 drawing paper. Toned in gold borax and platinum. Sorry I can't get the color right... it's subtle and nice: midtones remind me of the color with vinegar instead of citric acid in the silver nitrate. The darkest shadows were just starting to turn a sooty black when I stopped the toning.

Salted paper print of a calotype . Printed 28 January 2018 7x11 inch image on 9x13 Strathmore 500 drawing paper, plate finish Started exposure facing East away from the sun with a paper diffuser, my daughter and I went to the beach and when we got home the sun was setting. I finished it with 5 minutes under BLB but it didn't print deeply enough to tone well. Toned in gold thiocyanate for over an hour, it did not shift the color much but it did increase contrast and brighten the water a bit. It has a kind of soft light look that reminds me of that morning. I thought I was going to need to re-print it, but I like it just the way it is.

This is a salted paper print made from a calotype. Printed 17 September 2016. I wish I could get the color right so that you could see it. I fussed around for quite a while but just could not get it to look like the print. The print has a slightly peachy-pink cast and a nice soft light look...nothing harsh at all. I'm afraid it this image does not even hint at the tones in the print. Lana Aquarelle paper, 2% Hawaiian alaea salt, 0.5% citric acid, 0.5% sodium citrate, 1% "superclear" pigskin gelatin. I have a batch of different papers salted with this combination, and every print before this one had some problem with fog. For this print I added more citric acid to the sensitizer and it solved the fog problem, but it did also slow down the printing a bit. It was coated with 12% AgNO3, 10% CA. 2 hours with a paper diffuser, in the shade aimed East away from midafternoon sun. 5 minutes aimed East without diffuser. 90 second blast of straight sun to lock in the darks. Toning: 0.34 g borax + 3.4 ml 0.2% gold chloride in about 80 ml of water for 20 minutes. Then added a scant 1 ml of 2% ammonium thiocyanate and agitated until the first hint of a shift in tone was apparent: 2 minutes. This shifted the tone away from red toward peach and somewhat more neutral. I think it made the highlights ever so slightly brighter too. I'm very pleased with it :) I'm going to attempt to tone a whole series this way -- but not with this salting solution, which was troublesome. I'll try to capture the color better next time.

Salt print from calotype. Calotype had a few spots touched up on back w/ soft pencil. Lana Aquarelle, 2% alaea salt, 0.5% CA, 0.8% gelatine. Sensitized with 12% AgNO3, 6% CA. Bright overcast at start, partly sunny after first 1/2 hour. 1h 25m toward N sky with paper diffusor. 10m facing E away from sun, no diffusor. 2m direct 4PM sun. Toning: 2ml 0.2% gold chloride + 2ml 2% ammonium thiocyanate in about 80ml DH2O. 12 minutes. Followed by: 0.2g borax + 1ml 0.2% gold chloride in about 80ml water, 10 minutes Hard to get the tone right on this digi-snap. It is a little more neutral, but also a tiny bit more toward dark purple in the water. It also looks sharper with more "pop". Printed 27 February 2016

First tries at salt printing. It is very fun! The background is nearly pure white, don't know why the scan makes it grey. 5.3 x 9 inches, printed 4 January 2014.