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Loris,
The images you have kindly put on w/s, at my request, are very impressive,
indeed, even the ones which you might consider as
failures..........and all this with a process which you have only recently
become acquainted.
It was only eight
days ago that you wrote the following in response to Marek's brief outline
of his work with Javel Water.
Such a short time
to achieve so many tests with the Bleach / Gum technique !
!
The images of the
attractive lady look exactly as if they are the same image and
not different images produced as gum prints. I noticed this by studying
the small but definate blemishes which are obvious even on the monitor.
You have
surely achieved mastery since you are able to reproduce
different gum prints with this amount of accuracy,
i.e.
each one with with this amount of faithfulness to the
negative.
But please could
you explain why you attempted to polyurethane coat test number three and spoil
it ?
After several years
of working with a direct carbon technique I must admit my results have not
come near to what you are now doing.
I am looking
forward to seeing the other two failure stages, flaking etc., when time
permits.
Very many
thanks for your startling response to my irritating
questions.
Regards
John - Photographist - London - UK
...........................................................................
Tuesday 27
November Loris wrote
''This is very interesting Marek. Thanks for sharing!
I
would like to try this tomorrow but, what exactly you mean by “Chlorox”? Is it a
specific trademarked product or just a short name for ordinary household bleach?
(Such as using “Kleenex “for paper towels – in Turkish, we use “Selpak” for the
same instead of longer “kagit mendil”...)
Thanks in
advance,
Loris.''
On 11/27/07 11:52 PM, "Marek Matusz"
<marekmatusz@hotmail.com> wrote:
Very interesting
thread. I was in the Big Bend NP hiking and taking pictures, happy without a
computer or cel phone for a few days. I only got to read some of the emails
now.
Here is my comment from the practical standpoint of a gum printer. My
one coat gum prints have eveloved to a practice that gives maximum darks and
long (relative) tonal range of the final print (not to be confused with long
negative density range). Some of my prints were included in the travelling
portfolio last time around.
Here is a description of my pratice.
Coat
the paper with gelatine / harden it.
FOr the gum layer I prefer highly
pigmented carbon black.
Use longer exposure (3 to 5 times normal
exposures). I really have not tried to push it even further.
Soak in water
to remove dichromate.
Develop in a weak chlorox solution. My dilution is
about 20 cc/liter of water. Could be as little as 10cc if I want slow action
or as much as 40 to 50. Once the print starts bleeding the pigment I place it
in water and watch for a few minutes following the development. If the
development is slow, dip back in chlorox for a few minutes. The reason for
moving it back and forth is that the action of chlorox continues for a few
minutes and it is easy to just wash the gum layer completely.
Actually I
use this method a lot for my tricolor gum prints as well.
How
close is that to direct carbon? I call it gum, but it has all the ingredients
mentioned in this discussion, geletine, gum, chlorox (or Javelle water
version).
Marek
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