I enjoyed Ron Silvers' piece on papers for Pt printing.
After a great deal of experiment I came to the conclusion if one was going to
spend a lot of money on a photographic process such as platinum, the the process
itself deserved some respect. There is evidence to suggest that the best
platinum prints tend to be from negatives that have been shot with platinum in
mind. This comment arises from comparisons with platinum prints made from
negatives shot for silver gelatine printed using contrast controls.
Once this conclusion had been reached the decision had to taken as which papers
should be honoured with Pt/Pd sensitiser. The English and Italian water-colour
papers I use, after trying many others, come in HOT and NOT, ie smooth and
'mat'. These two finishes together with the changes in warmth that varying the
humidification and sizing give, and changes in the depth of black that results
from the proportion of platinum in the mix, give me the control I need. But I am
always ready to learn but I will not be experimenting with the machine coated
material at that price when a little experiment with food colouring and a hake
brush will soon enable one to achieve consistent results with hand coating.
Terry King