The second company, a corporation was called TKL. The name had to do with
the initials of other people involved in forming the corporation. I never
did know exactly what it stood for. Most of the people who bought shares
were students in his classes.
>I believe you mentioned that Jack had been a studio photographer for Warner
>Bros?
He was a photographer there immediately before beginning his school.
>If the Etch-a-tone was a razor blade process, what was the pigment process
>using oil paint and a solvent wet swab? Can you relate any details on these
>tone processes? Do you have Jack's/Mortensen's gum formula, I seem to have
>lost it? Did he teach you the developer-wet paper negative process? Any
>other MacDonald secrets or processes?
Etch-a-tone was what he called the oil paint and solvent swab process. I
cannot remember what name he used for the pumice.
When he was teaching, he manufactured all of the materials. Therefore he
did not give out any formulas. That was the biggest disadvantage of going
to school there. We knew that if he went belly up, we could no longer work
the processes. When he published his book in 1981 (HOW TO MAKE OLD-TIME
PHOTOS) co-authored with Melba Smith Cole, we had some of the formulas
available. The book was published by TAB books, ISBN 0-8306-1039-1. The
book does not have all of the formulas of the materials we used. I also
have some doubts that some of the formulas he published were the same as
the materials we learned on.
He did teach the developer-wet paper negative process as a means of
reducing contrast in paper negatives or diapositives. The paper was soaked
in developer before exposure. Then the paper was squeegeed out, and put
under the enlarger. There were 2 exposures made. The first exposure
picked up the shadows. Then the paper was allowed to develop with the
developer that was absorbed into the paper. This formed a mask which
prevented the shadow areas from getting any more exposure during the second
exposure. So the second exposure only picked up light from the highlight
areas.
The other method he taught for limiting contrast in paper negatives was
water development. The paper was exposed normally. The first part of the
development was in standard developer with constant agitation. After an
initial development of 30 sec or 1 min the paper was put in a water bath,
and allowed to continue developing with no agitation. During the second
development, the developing was limited to the developer brought over into
the water bath. Thus the shadow development was greatly reduced, while the
highlight areas could develop fully. The amount of time in the first
developer was the variable which controlled the amount of contrast.
> I found MacDonald to be a wealth of information but very much on the
>secretive side, he liked to dole it out as if it was part of secret cult.
>When I first ran into him I had already been doing gum, Kallitype, and a few
>other non-silver processes for several years and had what I believe were
>some nice prints of my own work. Jack and I had sort of a love-hate
>relationship as I was rather young at the time, in my late 20's early 30's,
>and would call him on some errors at times. I challenged him on the Platna
>Print Kits which he tried to claim were platinum, but in fact were Kallitype
>kits. Maybe by the time he started the second school, he had cleaned up his
>act.
I am fairly certain that he had at least a little platinum in his platinum
kits by the time I started taking classes from him. He was definitely a
wealth of information.