 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Interesting Times
As I write this on 10th. October 2004, I am reminded of the Chinese curse which says “May you live in interesting times.” As photographers, we are certainly living in some very interesting times as the effects of the rise of digital photography are truly being felt in the manufacturing sector of the industry. In the last two weeks Ilford has gone into receivership and Kodak has announced 600 job losses in the UK alone. Tamron the parent company of Bronica also announced that from the end of the month Bronica are no longer making their very good range of medium format cameras. A friend sent me an email last week saying that he had heard that the paper and film manufacturer Forte were also having problems.
I feel that in about 5-10 years creating black and white prints in a traditional wet darkroom will be an activity a little like those working with Cyanotype, platinum/palladium, or the carbro process. In other words, an alternative process. Within the next year or so, I can see myself switching to a digital outfit for commercial work and keeping my 5x4in. and 5x7in. cameras for personal work.
I’m not sorry to be contemplating the switch to digital for some of my work, as I think good colour inkjet prints can be as good as the finest colour prints from negatives or transparencies. However, I still enjoy the traditional processes for black and white personal work. Photography, whether traditional or digital, will still be about making pictures and the gifted artists will come to the top with whatever medium they use. Although I have not seen many black and white digital ink jet prints compared to the number of conventional photographs I have looked at, I haven’t yet seen print quality to compare with the original prints by people such as John Blakemore, John Davies, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Paul Caponigro, John Sexton and many other fine photographers and printmakers. There is something special about the surface quality of a fine black and white print which gives it a unique appeal. When I do start seeing inkjet prints of comparable quality and appeal then digital will certainly have arrived.
© Colin Dixon 2004
The foreword below was written for the book “Light and Time” which contains 60 black and white photographs and was published in Italy in September 2004 to mark the opening of the exhibition of the same title.
FOREWORD
I have been making photographs for almost fifty years. This is not unusual for someone my age. What is slightly more unusual is that I enjoy working in a darkroom to create black and white prints. In short, I am as enthralled by the processes of photography, and of being involved in the technical and creative aspects of it, as I was as a young child. Like the late Gary Winogrand I am fascinated by the process of making photographs of the world I encounter in order to see what that world looks like in photographs. It is an activity whereby I turn my gaze to chosen aspects of the world, then by careful and caring attention to those aspects of the encountered world attempt to create resonant, coherent and meaningful images of that world.
My photographs become a means of exploring my relationship with the objects and environments I choose to photograph. The act of making photographs, from selecting and framing the subject, exposing the film, developing that film, and then making prints from it enhances my experience of the world. For me there is a form of transformational magic involved in photography. Its practitioners are engaged in transforming the real world into personal representations of that world. Photographs can become an objective correlative to an inner state. The experience of choosing a subject after looking carefully at that subject and then making photographs becomes a means of intensifying my encounter with that subject. The act of looking itself becomes a creative act. One moves from sight to insight and the process can become one of celebration and affirmation.
My choice of subject matter, whether the landscape or architecture, is as a result of a preoccupation with what people do with the land, how we interact with it and how we shape the architectural spaces in which we live and work. It is impossible to think of who we are without considering where we are. We affect and alter our environment and it, in turn, affects and alters us. Working in the landscape or with aspects of architecture becomes a process of encounter. The resulting photographs are distillations of what I consider to be significant in that encounter. My landscapes all bear some sign of people’s influence and my architectural subjects are wholly created by humankind. I hope that my photographs encourage the viewer to consider their own relationship to the environments they inhabit.
© Colin Dixon 2004
Fine Print Workflow
April 2004
I have just started making the prints for an exhibition which opens in Florence in September 2004. It is an exhibition of sixty of my black and white photographs and is titled “Light and Time”. The task of making just sixty exhibition prints is big and hard enough but it may move on to Parma after Florence and I am also showing it in Britain in 2005. As the prints may not come back from Italy in time for the U.K. exhibition I have to do another set, plus additional prints for potential sale. I also need to make a number of smaller prints for publicity releases. When I’ve finished I will have made around three hundred prints, probably more. It is hardly surprising if Brett Weston’s heartfelt statement that “Photography is 90% sheer, brutal drudgery and the other 10% is inspiration.” keeps coming to mind.
I know that in a good twelve hour day I might have made sets of prints from between three and six negatives and that it will only be six if things go really well. Quite simply the prints have to be as good as I can make them. There are no shortcuts in the process of making fine prints and I know that when tired, if I find myself saying that a print will do; that it is good enough or close enough, then I will end up reprinting it the next day. Good enough isn’t, close enough never will be. They have to be as unconditionally good as one can make them.
What is important is that one’s working methods are as economical as possible in terms of time and effort yet maximise the qualities of the prints produced. Over the years I have evolved a method of working in the darkroom, when making fine prints, which minimises the time spent printing, toning and print finishing whilst maximising the quality of the finished prints.
For exhibition printing I mostly use the Beers hard and soft working print developers in two separate trays. I make these up from raw chemicals which I usually get from Silverprint. Many books give various ratios for mixing these two developers together to change the contrast and look of the print. However I’ve never done this as once they are mixed you may then want a different contrast and look for the next print.
Beers Hard and Soft Developers
High Contrast
Solution (hard working)
Water @ 50ºC 750mls.
Hydroquinone 8.00g
Sodium Sulphite anhydrous 23.00g
Potassium Carbonate anhydrous 27.00g
Potassium Bromide 2.20g
Water to make 1000.00mls
Low contrast solution
(soft working)
Water @ 50ºC 750mls.
Metol 8.00g
Sodium sulphite anhydrous 23.00g
Potassium Carbonate anhydrous 20.00g
Potassium Bromide 1.10g
Water to make 1000.00mls.
If you haven’t got facilities for mixing up your own chemicals then it is possible to use the two developer method with proprietary developers. Use your normal developer as the hard working developer, say Dektol or Ilford PQ Universal and use a soft working developer such as Agfa Adfaptol or Tetenal CentrabromS in the second tray. If I do this I mix up Ilford PQ Universal at 1:6 instead of the normal 1:9. By keeping the developers in separate trays you retain total flexibility and development takes no more time than when using a single print developer.
My initial method of print development is to place an exposed test strip or print in the first tray of hard working developer until the image starts to appear, usually at about 30-45 seconds, I drain the print for 15 seconds and note the time it is placed in the second tray of soft working developer (Usually at 45-60 seconds). It is then left in this tray until 15 seconds before development is complete, which in my case is usually 3 minutes. I drain it and, when time is up, it is put it into a tray of odourless stop bath for about half a minute. If I’ve just developed a test strip I place it in the first fixing bath of Ilford Hypam at a dilution of 1:4 for thirty seconds. I then give it a quick rinse, squeegee the strip on glass to remove as much water as possible and dry it quickly with a hair drier so dry down has occurred and evaluation of contrast, density and tonality is easier and more certain. If I get the information I want from the test strip I will then make a print. If however the test strip is not quite right I will either adjust the contrast on the enlarger, expose for longer or shorter intervals, or vary the time the paper is in each developer. If I want slightly more contrast then it will be left in the hard working developer for longer. If I want slightly less then it will be in the hard working developer for less time and longer in the soft working developer. If I try all the variables and it still doesn’t look right then I may try something different.
Paper choice is one way to make a print look different. Some papers handle highlight separation particularly well and some favour greater shadow separation. The papers I have in store for this exhibition are Agfa Multicontrast Classic (glossy), Oriental Seagull, Forte Polywarmtone (semi matt and glossy), Forte Polygrade FB (glossy), Fotospeed Legacy (glossy), Forte Fortezo (glossy) in grades 2, 3 and 4 and Kodak Ektalure. Although the Beers developers are my standard developers I also have some Agfa Neutol WA warmtone developer, Ilford PQ Universal and some Ansco 130 developer to hand. The Ansco developer needs to be mixed up from raw chemicals. Each developer will have some effect on the final print colour and its contrast. Although my nominal development time is a total of three minutes I may also try longer development times up to five or even six minutes. It is especially important that you have done a safelight test for all your development times with all your different types of paper. Safelight fogging is an insidious process which can so easily affect your highlight values. Remember there are no shortcuts so do the testing.
As I’ve often said in the past I try to reduce variables in the printing process. One thing I’ve done is to standardise my method of agitation. I now agitate continuously by flipping the print or test strip first one way and then the other along both its length and then its width for the whole development time. Occasional rocking of the developer tray is not enough and leads to inconsistencies.
In the interest of archival properties in my prints I use two fixing baths. The first is Ilford Hypam at a dilution of 1:4 and the second is a plain hypo bath. Both fixing baths are tested at intervals with Tetenal fixing bath test strips which are very quick and simple to use. They give a visual indication of silver content and fixer ph. Each bath is replaced well before their silver content approaches the limit. Although I could use a second bath of Hypam and end up with a total fixing time of one minute I prefer to use the plain hypo bath as a second bath for three minutes because then I can put the print straight into selenium toner without having to wash the print first. If one uses only Hypam or other fixers, prints then need a good wash after fixing otherwise they are likely to stain in the selenium toner. Using hypo as the second fixing bath means that print washing need only be done once, after toning. After the selenium toning the print is given a short rinse in running water and then put into Kodak hypo clearing agent for 5-10 minutes with occasional agitation. While the prints are in the clearing agent I take the negative just printed from out of the enlarger and set up and focus the next negative. After hypo clearing the prints are put into a holding tray of running water until I can get them into my vertical print washer. They will be left in the vertical washer with the water at about 20ºC, and the water will be changed three times over a period of at least two hours.
I’ve tried many methods of print drying and with certain papers, under certain conditions, I’ve occasionally ended up with prints that have rippled or cockled edges which are very hard to get absolutely flat. I suspect that speed of drying is a factor in this and that squeegeeing the print and drying it on screens may be a cause if the print dries too quickly. A few months ago I came across Lloyd Erlick’s website (http://www.heylloyd.com/technic/drying.htm) where he outlines his method of print drying. It is so simple and it works. Basically the prints are taken from the wash and each one is rinsed in a shallow tray of purified water. Here in Northumberland there is a danger that the tap water may leave drying marks on the print. The prints are then hung up on a line to dry without squeegeeing. I have put some lengths of strong braided nylon cord above my darkroom sink as the wet prints drip a little. I use some Marrutt stainless steel film clips with one at each corner on the shortest side of the paper. On the bottom corners I use weighted Paterson film clips which minimises the curl of these corners but these are not essential. The prints dry overnight and although there is some curling towards the emulsion side it is only large radius curl with no cockling. The dry prints are placed under a heavy melamine covered board with extra books on top for a few hours. I suspect that the prints, being wetter, dry more slowly and evenly reducing stresses in the paper. Whatever the reasons, it works beautifully and is easy.
The next few weeks will be the most intensive printing I have ever done. Making fine prints is one of those jobs that doesn’t get any easier as you get better at it. What happens is that you know more about what is possible to achieve and you discriminate more vigorously against anything that isn’t your best. You are constantly pushing your own limits and those of the materials you work with. Of course it will be very hard work, both mentally and physically, but it will also be deeply satisfying as some of the prints are from negatives made almost 20 years ago and some from negatives made in the last few months.
Pyro PMK / Dixactol Film Developers Review
There is no such thing as a perfect film developer in the same way that there is no perfect film or perfect camera. We carefully choose the tools for the job to minimise compromise as much as we can. For a few years now I have been using Pyro PMK as my main developer for medium and large film formats with Perceptol at 1:3 dilution or Speedibrews Resofine 2 bath developer reserved for Fuji Neopan 400 when using 35mm.
The pyro, which I mix up myself to Gordon Hutchings PMK formula, gives high film speed and a long shelf life. It also gives a yellow/green stain which helps mask the grain and preserve highlight detail. Since I started using Pyro a couple of kits have appeared on the market which make it easier to prepare if you haven't got a chemical balance. One is Filmplus pyro developer which comes in liquid form and just needs diluting and the other is Silverprint Pyro developer which is in powder form to be mixed ready for further dilution.
I was perfectly happy with my own self-mixed Pyro PMK mixture or both the packaged kits when along comes Barry Thornton with another staining developer which he claims has certain advantages over Pyro. His DiXactol can be used as a two bath developer or as a single bath one shot developer. I reviewed it as a two bath developer in the June/July 2000 issue of Freelance Photographer and was very impressed. At the time I also tried it as a single bath developer and decided it was well worth further experimentation. DiXactol uses pyrocatechol as its tanning and staining agent together with a critically small amount of glycin as opposed to the pyrogallol of the PMK formula. It had to be tested against Pyro PMK and during a recent trip to Copenhagen I was able to start doing that when I had a few days without distractions, apart from the pure pleasure of looking for, and making, photographs.
I exposed both Agfapan APX 100 and Ilford HP5+ films for later development in Pyro and DiXactol. These two films are not at the cutting edge of modernity in terms of film technology but I know from my own comparisons that in the medium speed film range the photographs I make using APX 100 seem to have a pictorial quality which occurs to a lesser degree in its competitors. The differences are slight but under critical examination worth having. In Pyro I rate APX 100 at 80iso. and place my shadow value on zone III. Development in Pyro avoids any tendency to block up highlights and a Zone III placement, rather than the textbook Zone IV, for dark shadows increases separation in the dark tones which is a great aid in getting a print that can be considered "fine".
In the faster film range I like both Ilford HP5+ and Fuji Neopan 400 (both
rated @320iso.) but Barry Thornton claims that DiXactol and the Ilford film
work particularly well together so that was the film tried.
Pyro and DiXactol essentially work in the same way in that after normal development ,stop and fixing the film is given a two minute immersion in the used developer which should, by now, be dark brown from the by- products of oxidisation. It is this re-immersion in used developer that helps impart the stain which is such an integral part of these two developers. Both films need at least 20 minutes washing for the stain to develop fully and I give 30 minutes in running water @21 C.
For DiXactol Barry Thornton claims that the same development time is fine for most films to give a normal (N) development and that zone system exponents need to experiment to find their plus and minus development times.The very full notes that come with DiXactol explain any variations form this normal time. I used 9 minutes at 21 C for both the APX 100 and the HP5+ and was very happy with the results. If you are using DiXactol as a one shot one solution developer then you will use a lot more of bottle B. and Barry Thornton has a scheme whereby you buy two bottles of solution B at the time of purchasing the Dixactol. Coincidentally, my times for a normal (N) development for both APX 100 and HP5+ in Pyro were the same at 13 minutes. For both Pyro PMK and DiXactol I mix them up to stock solutions and dilute them using distilled water as this helps avoid uneven staining.
After all the films were dry it was easy to see which had been developed in DiXactol and which in Pyro PMK. The negatives from the former were stained a very pale brown while those developed in Pyro were a stronger yellow brown tone. Initial examination of both sets of negatives indicated that the film speeds were essentially the same for both and that contrast was very similar at the the development times used.
I made a series of prints from matched negatives and when they were dry I looked at them closely to see what differences were noticeable. To be honest the differences were very slight, with the negatives developed in DiXactol possibly having a touch more shadow detail. There was excellent sharpness and smooth tonality and with 10x8" prints from the 6x4.5cm. negatives grain was, as expected, invisible. It has been said that when using variable contrast paper that DiXactol will keep more separation in the highlights so I enlarged a section from photographs on HP5+ of a silver car to see if highlights on the bodywork, windscreen and chromework exhibited any differences. This section was equivalent to a full print size of almost 18x15ins. and grain from the negatives is just visible in both cases in the mid tones. The grain from the HP5+ negative developed in DiXactol is slightly more apparent than that developed in Pyro but again the difference is slight. In terms of highlight tonality it is a very close with the DiXactol negative in this situation (Thin cloud cover but reasonably bright) showing a trace more highlight separation.
By now it should be clear from my description of the characteristics of these two staining developers on the films used that it was a very close call. I am impressed with both of them and believe they offer certain advantages over non-staining developers. I know Pyro, and its characteristics, inside out but buying the raw chemicals and mixing them up, while admittedly the most economical way of using Pyro, is also a bit of a chore. Both the powder and liquid kits for making Pyro PMK as well as DiXactol are available from Silverprint (020 7620 0844)..
Which developer will I use in future? The answer is that both of them are supremely good film developers and Barry Thornton has to be congratulated for creating an exceptional new film developer. His website at www.barrythornton.com is well worth a look and provides much information on DiXactol specifically and black and white photography generally. I have a couple of months worth of Pyro left in the darkroom but I am also going to order more DiXactol as I want to try it with large format, continue using it with roll film and try a wider range of films. I will try it in extreme conditions and also work out times for zone system expansions and contractions then I will decide whether DiXactol or Pyro PMK will be my main developer of choice. It really is that close.
© Colin Dixon 2000
