Re: Cyanotype toning and lead acetate.

What's throwing me off is I think I did publish the one Bob describes, tho
maybe didn't identify it clearly. In P-F #5, I describe the alternating
baths that my spacey undergraduates did getting gorgeous dark purplish
shadows and tannish highlights.

I call them spacey simply to point out there was no great science
required, just careful timing, & system. (I loved -- not all -- but many
of the spaciest dearly.)

The relative timing in the bleach and the redevelop control the relative
depth of the tones. If you bleach longer the shadows will go tanner. We
never used a citric acid rinse, ever, and got perfectly clear whites -- IF
THE BATHS WERE FRESH. Many of our combos (from memory again) gave much
better color WITHOUT a rinse between -- so we'd mix up a huge beaker of
the tannic acid & another of the sodium carbonate bleach, and pour just
enough to cover the wet print... then dump after use.

Another point for anyone who's got P-F #7 -- I was so peeved to find
Robert Hirsch & John Valentino had copied and pasted that rot from Keepers
of Light about the problem with cyanotype toners turning the highlights
yellow "in about a week" that I wasted too many of my remaining hours on
earth trying to figure out where they got that from. And I did. There's no
way I am going to type that up and put on line -- I'm not keeping secrets,
it's just a very large project I can't undertake if I want to retain
whatever shards (not in my spellcheck) of sanity remain.

However, just glancing now at the article, I see I've got in italics that
rinsing between baths is useless "In fact, it's counterproductive." In my
tests, rinsing between baths made the print flatter & the paper base not
one bit whiter... If anyone has a P-F #7 and an optical scanner, however,
they're welcome to put that article from P-F #7 (page 36) on a website,
just please attribute and also include my diatribe about fakes in manuals,
in loooong footnote at the end of the article, page 38.

Bob, does this sound like the combo you use?

PS. I also commented, "I forgave the great, trail-blazing KoL for its faux
pas though I wondered where in the world it came from. However,"It's no
mystery where the Photographic Possibilities formula came from, though it
makes matters worse with some touches of its own."

Judy
Received on Thu Apr 20 23:28:16 2006