Salt print.

It is not too far from albumen to salt printing (albumen is essencially a salted paper print, using albumen as binder). It is actually much easier to prepare salt solution then the eggs' whites albumen, and it's less smelly!

Same fixer and silver sensitizing solution, as for albumen, can be used - at least that's what I did.

Just mixed water, salt and gelatine (- most popular receipt, details below).

The main issue stays the proper negative. This time I've used an old, one of my first collodion portraits, accidentally overexposed - waiting  for printing test until now :)

..a lot to learn on this processes, it's just a record of the first tests..

30 min exposure, halogen lamp 400W, 4x5 WPC negative, water colour paper

Receipts:

5 grams Sodium Chloride

0.5 grams Gelatine
250 ml Distilled Water

Mix gelatine with one fourth of the water and let it bloom a bit. Heat the rest of the water and dissolve Sodium Chloride (Sea Salt) in it. Then mix the two together. Cover the paper with salt solution and leave to dry.

Sensitize with - I've used 15% silver nitrate solution in distilled water, that I've prepared for albumen first. (different sollution can be used, most typical - 12%, but 15% should result in increased contrast). Leave to dry.

Expose. Wash in water. Fix (again - same as for albumen) :

75 grams Sodium Thiosulphate anhydrous

(as I had only ST Peptahydrate I've multiplied the required amount by 1.56 =117g)

500 mL Distilled Water

1g sodium carbonate (washing soda, which you can buy or you can 'do' (like in my case) by heating baking soda) (some receipts do not include it)

Wash well - ca 30 min.

Printing Collodion Negatives - albumen & photo paper tests

All I can say, so far, is that I need to work more with negative's densities, and possibly different ways of their intensification, but I'm glad I have tried it finally.

It is working and I've got something to start with :)

First Albumen print (8x10) :

Ilford Multigrade IV rc paper, developed in Rodinal (8x10 contact print) :

albumen and photo paper together:



Ambrotype for comparison (8x10)  :

Negative (doubled exposure and development time, plus redevelopment with a few drops of silver nitrate) :

Other photo paper prints from thinner negatives (4x5) :

(some of them were printed as cyanotypes a while ago LINK1 & LINK2)

Positive - Negative. Experiments with ambrotypes

At the time when I'm writing this (23.07.2011) there is an interesting exhibition taking place in Dublin, called Chasing Shadows 2. It is dedicated to 19th century photographic processes and gathers together artists photographers, who are using them. Presented processes are, among others, cyanotypes, Van Dykes, Palladium, and four projects (including mine) use wet plate collodion.

Very shortly before the exhibition, knowing that there's going to be more collodion works presented,(and as always having problem to choose from my existing works), I decided to experiment with the way of presenting clear glass ambrotypes and also to make some new ones.

I end up with a play: Positive - Negative. I concentrated on this specific feature of ambrotypes and mounted my works with a distance to the background, on which I painted with black paint only the chosen areas, leaving the rest on white, as underexposed negative.

This play created kind of a three dimensional effect. I think it also encourages the viewer to closer examination, exploration with different angles and ..imagination.
I think I might experiment more with different backgrounds and layers in the future. (i.e different photographs..)

oryginals scanned with black bacground:

scan of already mounted works:

on the wall:

Exhibition information:

18 July 2011 - 31 July 2011 

Centre for Creative Practices

15 Lower Pembroke Street

Dublin, Ireland

The photographers involved include: Claudi Nir, Louis Haugh, Kamile Matulaityte, Ian Mitton, Jamie Maxwell, Dominic Turner, Meave O'Neill, Caitriona Dunnett, Gwen Wilkinson, Kasia Kesicka, Orla O’Brien, Alison Baker Kerrigan, Monica Fabijanczyk, Jason Lowe, Niamh Raftery, Monika Chmielarz, Dominique Beyens, Adrian Reilly and Lucy Nuzum.

http://www.chasingshadows.org/description2.html

Collodion, cyanotype and coffee

Cyanotype is not among the techniques recomended for collodion negatives printing, but I'm testing it from time to time...
cyanotype print from collodion negative,
security lamp 1hour exposure,
coffee toned