Month: March 2020

#1. Done with a film neg, paper coated about 3 weeks before the exposure was made. (Guardi Watercolor Post Card paper)

#2. Printed from film neg, about 24 hours after coating; Silverberg handmade watercolor paper

#3. & #4. Printed from same coating batch as #2, but a week later from a LASER-Printed negative, on Boesner 250gm mixed media paper.

#2,#3, and #4 all gold and selenium toned.

These are experiments, as I find my way to a working process, setting up the space here in Leipzig so that I can have consistent working conditions. Right now one of the big challenges is being able to get paper coated, dried and printed quickly (i.e., not having to wait for a week before I can find time to print).

I am finding the use of the gold toner to be a true “discovery”… while not as noticeable on #3 & #4, watching the changes when processing #2 was absolutely breath-taking.

But the base color of the paper of #2 is just not right… the neutral color of the Boesner 250 is nice and readily available. Of course, I’m saving my stash of Hahnemühle Platinum Rag for later! I mean, who wouldn’t!?

The “newest” aspect in all of this is that #3 & #4 were printed from a laser-printed digital negative (they are actually quarters from an A4 transparency sheet) that came from a cell-phone photo. That’s as opposed to #1 & #2, which were produced by contacting printing an HP-5+ film negative from a Fuji 6×9 camera. Because kallitype is a contact printing process, that means that the image is the size of the image matrix, in this case 6cm x 9cm (or 2 ¼” x 31/4″).

So once I feel I have a consistent paper/coating process I will be exploring the possibilities that this negative matrix creation will allow me moving forward. It means that I will be able to produce larger images and prints.

Thanks for following and enjoy the ride!