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Contents
Test
Printing
Test Samples
Straight
Print
First Dodge
Final
Dodge
Fibre Testing
Sepia
Printing
Introduction
This
is a brief account of the processes that went into the production of the
Peony print found in the flowers section of the site. Fine art
photography, especially black and white fine art photography is about
print manipulation in the darkroom. This does of coarse assume that a
correctly exposed negative has been acquired and processed.
Visualise
the Final Product
I don't want to sound like Ansel Adams but, first stage is to
visualise in your mind how you want the print to look and feel. How the
print feels is often a selection of paper. In the case of the Peony, I had
decided that I wanted to use Kentmere Art Classic paper, mainly because of
the rich texture, subtle tones and fine resolution. Kentmere Art
Classic has certain operational problems, the main one being it is
fibre based and is difficult to handle, expensive and difficult to dry
flat without specialist equipment. The look of the print was simple,
I wanted a Peony flower head that almost radiated light, kept all of the
flower head within the tonal range of the paper (this means that I don't
want areas of base white or dead black) and I want the background of
the print to be just that-background. In addition I wanted the print to
have a air of botanical authority about it which would mean some sort of
toning. Selenium was the final choice for toning as it has great archival
properties and has a purple hue which adds to the drama of the image. The
final print is featured below:
Note
that even with the poor quality of the scan you can see that the Peony
head has been captured within the tonal range of the paper. The Peony
page can be found
here.
On the next page we will examine the test prints.
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