Tag Archives: paper negatives

peroxide reversals part 2

Oct
25
2017
by jnanian | 0 Comments

well, as seen by my last entry i was able to get it to work a couple of weeks ago
so i attempted yesterday to do it again.  so inbetween “stuff” i had to do

i devleoped out a sheet of hand coated paper,  …  nothing  on it so i didn’t waste any
effort reversaing it  …  then i put some matt rc paper in the cyclone and exposed it

i counted 10 and the processed paper looked great, or at least as expected..  into a citric acid stop
then rinsed in running water for 2 seconds then into 250cc 3% big lots peroxide with 2 heaping teaspoons of citric acid …

after 3 hours  … nothing  …

knowing heat speeds things up ( well, sometimes ) i made a water jacket with hot hot water …
2hours later, nothing  …

changed the peroxide out for fresh and more citric acid  …  i checked it at midnight ( so after 14 hours )  … … nothing ,,

at 830am ( 22 hours of bleaching ) i swapped out the old peroxide, added the rest of the quart i had and 3 heaping teaspoons of CA ..
made another water jacket …  and if by the time i can make it back to review  … nothing has happened …

i’m probably going to return the peroxide to big lots ( 3 remaining quarts ) maybe it is “stale” ?

this whole thing is kind of frustrating to say the least …

more to come soon ..

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peroxide based photographic reversals

Oct
10
2017
by jnanian | 0 Comments

im back at attempting to making direct postive reversals again.

there have been a number of different ways to do these over the years,
some use toxic chemistry ( sulfuric acid dichromate bleach ) some use a somewhat dangerous process
( wet plate ) and others are rather finicky ( silver gelatin ferrotypes ).  there used to be a direct postive paper made by ilford
which was a single step, use normal photographic chemistry ( reglar old developer ) and it would develop a postive, instead of a negative,
these days when one says direct positive that is what comes to mind first …  the good folks at galaxy have come up with their version of direct postive
( not sure what is in it, probably sulfuric acid ) i havne’t tried their chemistry yet but from what it seems in their website/video it seems pretty fun and easy.

there is another reversal process that uses permanganate instead of sulfuric acid …

i’ve tried a few of these processes ..  the ilford paper is by far the easiest …  the permanganate one worked OK but i messed up the PH of the clearing bath.
i love making silver gelatin tintypes, but it is a finicky process …

a few weeks ago ( maybe a month ago ) joe van cleave posted a video that was reposted on photrio.com ( neé apug ) that detailed
his experiments with a reveral process he discovered someplace online, and through conversations he had with the person who posted it.

the process uses hydrogen peroxide and citric acid as a bleach, no clearing bath and if you go to joe’s website ( strongly recommend lots of fun stuff there ..
he is a paper negative artist, afghan camera user and an avid typist ! )  you will see his 3 videos and the images he has made with the process.
be advised he uses STRONG hydrogen peroxide, about 15%, which can be purchased at a variety of places,it is not the weaker less concentrated hydrogen peroxide
you might find at your local pharmacy.  i am kind of a scardie-cat when it comes to concentrated chemistr.  its not that i don’t have good lab-technique, or
a rubber apron, gloves or a respirator, its just that if i can get away WITHOUT using peroxide that strong, i’d rather do that.  it is one of my reasons
not currently doing wet plate photography …  if i can do without collodion i am good with that, and if i DID do wet plate work, i would definately use
speed fixer instead of the traditional Potassium Cyanide.

so the other day i went to big lots and got a few cheap quarts of hydrogen peroxide ( 89¢ each ) and i headed over to whole foods
to get some citric acid.  and i made a few exposures and attempts. first i was unsuccessful.
i was using coffee developer with a little d72 powder ( home mixed ) to boost the contrast and shorten development time.  the negative looked great.
into the weak citric acid stop bath, short rinse with water too, and into the hydrogen peroxide ( about 1/2 cup ) and citric acid ( abou 1 tsp ) bleach ..

it is supposed to take about an hour but it didn’t do anything and by the end of it all, even after i waited a couple of hours, and then turned the lights on to fog the paper
( part of the process ) nothing happened.

i did a 2nd try, and still, it didn’t want to work.

so  …  i consulted someone who i knew would have a clue.  he’s a photographer in california ned lewis,  he’s a brilliant photographer a goes by the handle NedL ( on ipernety, photrio ).
i know he would know what was going on, he’s the guy who discovered how to fix lumen / retina/sun prints and he’s a paper negative artist who makes calotypes
( like the original fox talbot process ! )
has also been working the past week to get this 3% system to work, and he has had fantastic results.

he thought that maybe there was carry over from the sodium carbonate rich developer that was killing the bleach.  makes sense to me.  so, i changed my print developer
and mixed up some sprint print developer great developer, great chemistry, great folks !

and  ..  i exposed a 3rd paper negative and it worked great !, so i exposed another one.

instead of beng on a tiny scrap of paper stuffed in a 35mm camera, i put a 5×7 sheet into a graflex 3a and photographed the
dining room window.  it took forever to bleach ( i had a 2nd 5×7 exposure n the same bleach bath ).  1 change of bleach, and about 6, maybe 8 ( i left and came back so i don’t
know exactly when it happened )  the paper negative was completely white, so i turned the lights on, fogged it and redeveloped it and it came out great. ( the 2nd one not so great bt that’s OK )

about a 8 hour process

ned and joe’s peroxide reversal

basically here is how it works:

 

you expose a paper negative and develop it in print developer,

you short stop bath it in a little bit of water and citric acid

and then put it in about 1/2 cup of 3% hydrogen peroxide with about a teaspoon of citric acid.

( there are actually gram measures and real volume measures he and joe use but im just tinkering to see if it works )

with joe’s recipe the print bleaches to white in a short amount of time, with NedL’s it takes about an hour, maybe a little longer.

after it is bleached so it looks like a white piece of paper you expose the print to light ( joe and ned both have the kind of light, time and filtration )

you redevelop in print developer, and it turns into a postive print ..  stop and fix and there you have it !

stay tuned !

 

Posted in alternative process photography, Misc., photographs Also tagged , , , |

back to the 1920s

Sep
27
2017
by jnanian | 0 Comments

ive traced my roots in photography, to the 1920s i think. my values seem to revolve around people like the dadaists and rusian constructavists and surrealists more than

the new traditionalists of today. while some of my contemporaries seek untouched lands they can transform into an emotion filled black and white or color terrestrial view, or a portrait that shows honesty, i have veered left into what has been a fun ride.

while i enjoy looking at terrestrial views and i love making portraits lately, at least i have found a new interest in sketching ( doodling? ) on paper and transfering that drawing onto hand made photo paper.

the drawing is made on regular old thin xerox/copy paper, and waxed with paraffin to make semi translucent. the receiver paper is made with an under coat of hand made emulsion ( see previous posts ) and a top coat of foma liquid emulsion …  they are not developed out in the darkroom but left in the sun so the image on the paper burns itself into the photo paper

the dark image with white lines is then scanned and sometimes inverted, sometimes left as is, and color added to give the image dimension. in my days learning how to render and architectural drawing this would be like doing a sketch and adding watercolor to the top.

 

enough talking about it …

here is one i did recently  ..  another is being exposed as i type this ..

 

tinted in ps

sketched, waxed printed

Posted in alternative process photography, liquid emulsion Also tagged , , |

late summer photographs

Aug
22
2017
by jnanian | 0 Comments

just a taste of what i have been doing lately.

it includes using a cyclone #3 and empire state …

as usual, i have been off the beaten path, i ended up in west greenwich at the plain meeting house

and also found myself at the abandonned and partially redeveloped lonsdale mill complex.  i’ve been to both places

before, but its been months.  i also found myself at home photographing closely.

tinted

cyclone #3, caffemol C + faux dektol

tinted in PS

trailer truck along building, overcast sun peeking through

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a few prints

Jun
09
2017
by jnanian | 0 Comments

this first prints were made by a digital overhead transparancy at my local copy shop
originally it was a digital files taken in a snow storm at a local park.  one was taken on jamestown island ( the windmill )
a few weeks ago.  all 3 of them were made using expired photo paper behind the digital negative and left in the sun by a window
for a few days.  i scanned the images and used levels a little bit as i do every scan

overhead transparancy

sun print blue removed

xerox negative

windmill on jamestown

conimicut

xerox machinenegative

i made a nice few images using the new emulsion made the other day

a few photograms

speed test

fast sun print took minutes!

speed test

sunprint

 

and a waxed negative

speed test

suprint made with waxed negative through the back of the paper

Posted in images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion, technique and style Also tagged , , , |

chloro bromide emulsion #2

Jun
06
2017
by jnanian | 0 Comments

its been a while since i made the emulsion i wrote about here
but that isn’t to say it hasnt been on my mind since a year ago january.  i’ve  been distracted with life and trying to finish off all my film, and making more sun and retina
and cyanotype prints.  but this morning i decided to make some more go-juice.

i dont’ really have a recipe that  belongs to someone else i follow but i mix and match hoping it will work,  this time around here is what i am doing:

 

120cc water
4g iodized salt
12g potassium bromide
1cc of watered down D72 !
20g hard bloom gelatin

( my last batch was knox gelatin, it worked OK for a little while but eventually the gelatin broke down and made a mess )

i heated up the water and added and stirred all the ingredients so they are mixed and dissolved well.  the water i put in a cheap metal pot
and i heated it up on the single burner i use to roast my coffee.  when everything got dissolved and well mixed i took the salted gelatin out of the pot
it’s now sitting on the enlarger table.  i’ll go back down in a little bit and re-heat it to liquid again as i mix the silver nitrate and water together.

next is the silver nitrate i put on an apron, gloves and EYE GOGGLES and measured 32g silver nitrate and 120cc warm water.
and mixed this until it was completely dissolved.

with the safelight on and the salted gelatin warm i stirred like mad and slowly mixed the silver nitrate into the gelatin.
eyesight is nothing to play with, and silver nitrate will blind you without a second thought.  always use eye protection !

anyways i dribbled and mixed the silver nitrate in there and the whole mixture turned white.
i’ll use this as a paper emulsion, so i won’t bother to wash it.  i put the ball jar into a locking air tight container
and then in a black paper bag and stuck it in the refrigerator to set.

i have no clue if it will work or not, i’m looking forward to finding out soon !

in a few days i will coat some paper and expose it and post my results

 

OK it is the next day and i really couldn’t help myself …

the emulsion was put in one of those hinged jars that have a rubber seal, like the stuff you might
have on your counter with coffee beans or sugar or whatever ..  the bell jar was inside that ..  the whole thing in
a black bag photo paper usually comes in when it is in the box ..  i didn’t really trust that the jar i put it in was light proof
so i bagged it when i put it in the little fridge.

the moment of truth ..

i brought the jar to the red room and opened it, and it set ( WHEW ! ) i always worry i didn’t put enough gelatin in there
and it would be a watery mess.  it was emulsion alright

i scooped a little out and warmed / melted it and painted it onto some card stock.

its drying now …  but when its dry i will rip it in half and hide half of it.  i’ll put something on the card and turn the lights on
and make a photogram in some dektol and see if this stuff works.  after that i will put s cut piece in my K1000 and make a test strip to determine
exposure times and iso’s.  and easy way i usually do is f 11, block the lens off and make a series of 1 second exposures. and develop the strip to see what happens.

 

OK …

well i realized the watered down 1cc ( if that ) of liquid i added at the end was dektol, not hypo
i hate amber bottles !

i did my first 2 tests and coated some more paper.

the photogram i made i counted to 6 with the room light on and it made a killer photogram.
i handheld a slip inside a camera f2 $ 15 seconds and it looks to be about right.

they are still washing and more paper is drying so i can’t really say for sure what everything is.
i know if in the camera ends up being too tedious i make enough photograms and sun prints it won’t be an issue using this home brew emulsion

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cyclone negative cyanotype

Nov
07
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

a couple of days ago i was making some more cyanotypes i loaded up some contact frames with waxed negatives to see if i could get a better print than i did with my old coated paper some of those prints just didnt’ work out ..  and at the same time i found an old hand coated paper negative made with the cyclone #3 a while ago, that was just sitting on the tabletop.  i had cleaned up quite a bit a week or 2 ago:  i swept the floor;  i organized;  i put things away;  i stacked things;  i found things i hadn’t seen in a while.  the paper negative was a rediscovery, even though it wasn’t really lost.  it seems like it was coated on xerox paper, it is thin and durable.  not sure what emulsion is on it, maybe foma?  maybe my home-brew, not sure.  it has a nice contrast and look and i stuck it in the contact frame.  the waxed negatives took a ton of time before to expose, so i was banking on a day or 2 in the sun for all 3 of the cyanotypes.  it was a lot more diffuclt in late october because the sun is low, and it moves across the sky differently than before, so i had to really follow the sun around with the print frames. i did OK i suppose, but i was more in open shade than i was in the sun, and that is OK too.  the print is made from the same classic formula i coated the others with.  and after 2 days in the sun i washed it in water and added a little hydrogen peroxide to finish the development, and eventually i painted some areas of the print with dilute washing soda to give a yellowish hue to some areas. anyhow, its the kitchen table and window and chairs. not sure if i am going to add my own colors or leave it, the blue tones of cyanotypes are starting to grow on me.

 

classic, and blue

window table and chairs
classic cyanotype H2O2 to develop out faster as i always do, and a little washing soda to bleach and ad color

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, using vintage equipment Also tagged , , , , , , |

emulsive

Sep
29
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

i thought i posted a link to this but i guess it got away from me.

i was interviewed by emulsive.org a little while ago about film and emulsion and what i am up to. in case you don’t know about emulsive org what i am up to here is the link what’s emulsive.org ?  feel free to go there, its a pretty interesting site

well worth the click !

I am John Nanian and this is why I shoot film

Posted in film development technique, technique and style Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , |

hand tinted

Sep
29
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

this is a hand tinted image of a tree &c down the road from me.  it was made with either a 8×10 or 11×14 paper negative, i can’t remember which one, but it was run through the empire state …  after scanning the image and inverting it, i added some colors.

hand tinted from large format paper negative

the wind blew at the coast, the leaves rustled and starlings flew away

Posted in technique and style Also tagged , |

more recent cyanotypes

Sep
25
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

if you have been reading my last few posts you probably know  i have been making cyanotypes.  what happened was i mixed a bunch of cyanotype chemistry and rather than get rid of it i coated everyting i could find …  14×17 xerox paper, butcher paper, velum (pierce and bristol ? ) mailing envelopes brown craft paper ..  some things work better than others …  i have done similar things with photo emulsion ..  just coated what i could to see what worked and didn’t …  and to be honest i am thinking that sometimes the stuff didn’t work because of how i use/ don’t use  whatever it is that i am using.  maybe it doesn’t like my negatives, maybe it doesn’t like my water source or developer …

anyways  here are a few more waxed paper cyanotypes

hot off the skillet !

 

cropped

on the way to vezelay walking up the hill

barely bleached

central france walking to vezelay basilica

saran wrap

dead plant and clothespin, classic cyanotype

 

i think the age of the classic formula gives it a weirdish green tone when i develop it out.  the saran wrap gives a nice wavy texture. the 2 waxed paper negatives are straight scans.  the negatives  are bleached a little bit to get rid of the blue, some areas turned brownish more. the way i bleach is that i put less than a thumble full of water logged washing soda ( calcium carbonate ) in a big beaker of water and it dissolves readily, then i pour the solution into the wash water and it dilutes as the tray drains ( it is a print washing tray i drilled holes in years ago for a water jacket )

a couple of fill and dumps the prints have bleached enough and i keep washing. the print has an area on it that is stained from the wax, but it is just the border, and doesn’t bleed into the print.  the waxed negative prints i usually leave in direct sunlight ( sun blasting on the print frame ) for 8 hours.  sometimes i don’t move it in time so it gets open shade or shady sunlight, sometimes it is shade before i remember to move it …  this time it started raining as i was exposing, so i brought in the frames and dried them and the glass off, and put them back out in the sun the next day when i could.  some water leeched in under the glass and messed with the print along with the blotchy-ness from the wax.  even thought some might view these as failures, and things i couldn’t do again if i tried, i see them as successes.  the waxed negative is great to work with and sometimes partial development by rain while the image is exposing can lead to interesting results.

Posted in alternative process photography Also tagged , |

how you make waxed paper negatives

Sep
17
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

i’m no expert in this field, i’ve had fun making waxed negatives on and off for a few years.  it can be a messy job and it might not work out very well.  i first saw how to make them by viewing a short video i found in the cyanotype group on flickr.  i’m not sure if i am allowed to link to it here on my blog, but it was posted a while back in a discussion on using paper negatives for cyanotypes.  the  person who posted the video is james harr, and his work is fantastic.  here is a video link to how he explains waxing:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Fo8seMrFo  i dont’ do exactly as he describes.  i use cheap paraffin,  but still,  his post gave me enough information that i could improvise and have fun.

 

what i do is first get my paper negative.  i don’t have a xerox machine here, or a ink jet printer whose inks won’t smudge or a laser printer.  what i do is i invert whatever image it was in photo shop and put it on a canvas the size i want to have it printed.  most recently it was 4 images on 81/2×11 paper.  the images were digital files from a nikon d200, nothing fancy.  i just desaturated them and inverted them.  i don’t use chart throb or any other programs to make my negatives i just by the bootstraps invert, cut/paste …  and to the copy store i went.  copies are cheap so i got a few of them knowing i might screw up.

i took a small cookie sheet and put it on the top of the stove to get hot to the touch and i put the xerox page in the pan … then i take a block/rectangle of gulf wax paraffin and start rubbing .  the wax melts and i keep rubbing until the paper looks “wet” i turn it over and do the same thing .. then a piece of paper towel i rub as much of the excess of as i can.  it works OK but not very well, i still need to perfect my situation.  depending on how well you rub the wax it might streak or form a texture or just remain as a layer on the paper, that said, the paper  that was once white is now greyish and see-through ( sort of ).

i put the negatives one at a time in a small contact printing frame.  the cyanotype paper i am using was coated IDK 7 months ago so i am not really sure how good or bad it is, it works so i guess it is OK.  i stick it in direct sunlight for as long as i can.  and move it around as the sun travels across the sky.  the wax usually stains the paper a little bit and bleeds but after a long sit in the sun, it seems to do whatever it is that it needs to do.  usually the receiving paper wtih cyanotype chemistry on it is very dark and over exposed.  there are really no details or very few details from the negative.  but i wash it anyways.  i watch the image clear a little bit and a little bit more until whatever it was that i printed appears.  sometimes they look better than others …  after they clear and have been washed for 15 mins, or 35 mins, i put very dilute washing soda and water in the wash water and bleed some of the blue out of the image.  it turns a color of yellowish brown and a little greenish blue.  there are artifacts from the wax in the print and while sometimes they are distracting or might take away from the print  other times they give a layer of texture in the print that i like.  these are small, between 4×5 and 4×6 and i scan them.  and fix them a little bit with photoshop but i don’t do much.  i might boost the contrast/levels a tiny bit, but that is what you do with any scan because of the scan process.  i also might remove a weird blotchy stain or weird artifact from using wax but i don’t really do too much to alter what is there.

 

here are a couple of my last ones i have done :

 

 

window sill detail, vezelay basilica, france

window sill detail, vezelay basilica, france

windmills and field

windmills and field

waxed paper negative from a digital file

waxed paper negative from a digital file

detail of arches, waxed negative

detail of arches, waxed negative

central france, paper negative

vezelay basilica central france, paper negative

 

 

as you can see, these prints can hold lots of detail or none at all,

and they are cheap + fun

Posted in alternative process photography Also tagged |

recent cyanotypes

Sep
14
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

just made a handful of cyanotypes lately using paper coated and left in a light safe in a humid basement for the last 7 or 8 months.  the paper was not the best but it worked (sort of) made some photograms ( some i watercolored ) i made a contact print with a waxed rubbing and tinted it in photoshop and i also converted some digital images into black and white negatives on xerox paper and waxed and printed them.

i have some more negatives to print and cyanotype paper to use up before i mix new.

 

rubbing waxed negative

rubbing waxed negative

4 screwdrivers

photogram, watercolors

3 nails

photogram, watercolors

semicircle of stuff

photogram, watercolors

truck

waxed paper negative

vezelay

waxed paper negative

metal wire brush

photogram, watercolors

 

 

 

 

as usual most of my work is on imagekind ( jnanian.imagekind.com )  feel free to browse.  through the end of september

i will be donating a portion of every purchase ( 70% ) to relief efforts in louisana.

 

 

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, technique and style Also tagged , , , , , , , |

photo illustration sort of, PS colored photo reconstruction

Jun
13
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

a while back i made some paper negative from hand made emulsion the negatives were more like a collage of things, images, textures, brush strokes. i decided to scan big and crop small and the image i retrieved from the paper was a sweet photograph of trees and a fencepost, but it always seemed to be missing something whenever i looked at it.  i put it aside for a good 6 months and looked at it a little bit more once i had distance from it

 

railing and trees

railing and trees

 

the other day i spent a handful of hours working on it.

i enlarged the canvas, i added colors ( which was i originally had hoped to do )

anyways, i worked and worked added, and subtracted and came up with this

 

 

cyclone

reworked image

it took hours, and it really still isn’t completely done, but it was fun making something that never really existed.

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged , , , |

double coating paper

May
13
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

i dug into a 1 kg jar of foma emulsion the other day.  i know i can make my own but i have this still on hand so i might as well just use it until i run out.  coating paper and glass and metal with it will be great practice for when i don’t want to waste stuff i spend time making on my own.  so i took a few of the large sheets of xerox paper i had already coated.  i took 1 of them and with the lights on i exposed it in developer to show how poorly i coat.  it wasn’t that poor, it just wasn’t very good,  no it was pretty bad … it was  a lot of grey, only 1 area of black.  i’ve been coating things for years and this is the first time i did this …  that’s ok.  im a noob, even after 30 years.  i used a coating rod the last time, and a brush, but still things weren’t as good as i had hoped.  with denise ross’s book in hand, or at least in my mind
( if you haven’t gotten her blurb book and you like coating things, and making things, it is worth every penny you pay for it:  http://www.blurb.com/b/6465389-the-light-farm  ..)  i never thought about paper grain ( now i do )  i never thought about wet coating ( now i do ).

i took the remaining 2 sheets of paper and cut them into 4×5 pieces and soaked them in cold water.  this isn’t really what denise did in the book but that’s ok.  it is easy to tell which side is emulsion and which isn’t ( the emulsion side is slippery ).  i took my squeegee and removed the water from the prints 1 at a time and with warm emulsion i re-coated each piece of paper.  i looked at each piece in the safelight and they looked coated ( i guess they always do )  but coating 4×5 pieces was always easy for me, so my fingers are crossed that the 2nd emulsion layer took.  i’ve coated cyanotypes 2x, and other stuff 2x but never wet.  i’m hoping denise’s invention and my twisting it for my own needs took.

i also took some sheets of regular paper and coated that stuff too.  1 sheet folds and cuts into 18 4x5s.  i’m still trying to figure out what it is.  i did a little research and it seems to be “virgin” butcher paper.  uline sells it cut into the same size sheets or on a big roll.  alex art supply also sells something similar to it.  in both cases it isn’t the same weight (thickness) but it seems similar enough that when i runout at least i will have something to buy.  smooth finish paper i like best for coating.  nyways, i cut 1 sheet up soaked and squeegeed it and coated 14 pieces.  they are hanging on the line.

 

 

Posted in images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion, technique and style Also tagged , , , |

hand coating xerox paper

May
06
2016
by jnanian | 0 Comments

i’ve been experimenting a little with hand coating a variety of different papers.  i have a stack of paper i was given 20 years ago that is slowly being  eaten away and i know i will need to find another something to coat.  i brought the paper to my print shop and local art stores ( locally we have a jerry’s artarama, dick blick and the risd store ).  no one could really tell me what it was but someone told me it seemed like butcher paper.  i looked around for a source and found a few places, i could get it on a big roll or separate 1/2 sheets.  uline has both sheets and rolls, alex art supply too.  its “virgin paper” so it doesn’t have the wax coating on it.  my local restaurant supply stores also have it too, in a big roll.  none of it was the same feel ( i got samples ) as the paper i have been using, but at least now i have a few leads.

a while back i bought a reem of 14×17 xerox paper that was acid free ( i am told it is ALL acid free ) .  i originally was using it to do rubbings which were waxed to print as silver prints or iron ones (cyanotypes) and it worked great, so i figured i would see how it held up with stuff coated on it.  i have a bunch of cyanotype emulsion coated on it, but haven’t exposed it yet, and i am wondering if i should bother.  i also coated 1 sheet with foma liquid emulsion and exposed it and just finished processing the negatives.  i love how smooth paper looks with emulsions on it.  most of the negatives look good but it came with a price.

the paper is VERY thin.  if azo or single weight printers think single weight paper is thin, they have never used xerox paper or thin japanese paper ( i’ll be using some of that next ).  a couple of pieces tore a little bit.  it wasn’t, too bad, maybe it was maybe because i am clumsy with rubber examination gloves on ( i hate using them ),  but it is something i worry about a little bit.  thin paper is weak when it is wet.

i also have a bunch of things i coated lately that i will be exposing and printing on.  i have some photo grade gelatin purchased from artcraft ( THEY ARE GREAT ! ) for my self made emulsion projects as i plug along.

so, this long ramble to say:  if you use xerox paper, be careful, its nice but it might be more trouble than it is worth.

Posted in images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged , |