Camera Obscura

Aamon. Cyanotype toning: 5’ tannic acid 1%, 15” paper revelator 1+9, acetic acid 0.1%, 5’ tannic acid 0.1%. Dark points are negative holes and do not depend from toning. Canson “C” grain paper, 224g, 24×32cm. Image size 17×25cm.

All of the cyanotype toning formulas that I tried, completely bleaching the image in an alkali and re-developing it in a tanning agent for a long time, gave red-browned flat hues with a little dmax. I always obtained best results with long tanning bathes and a quick immersion in a diluted alkali, which gave a print with warm grey, brown or pink lights, while shadows are intense blue, slightly violet or black. A part of the original blue of the cyanotype is conserved in the final print, giving not only a cold hue to shadows, but also keeping relatively high the dmax, penalized by a complete alkaline whitening.

I think this is cyanotype toning big deal. The contrast drop in the middle tones can be corrected applying the right curve, the flattening of the high lights often creates a delicate effect of softness and lightness; but the loss of shadow density is a problem that still doesn’t have a solution. Certain images work even without blacks, all played on pastel colors, but others need the strength of intense and deep shadows.

Toning formulas that promise deep blacks, neutral lights and no paper dyeing (such as tea or concentrated tannic acid) are found in literature. In general they are variants of the procedure described at the beginning: alkali and tanning. The order of baths, the repetition or not of the successive immersions, ph control, intermediate washings and the tanning or/and alkali nature are the changeable elements. Those variations have a strong impact on final return, but they always have the same denominator: flatness of hues and dmax reduction. But I’m still searching for the magical combination that intensify a cyanotype rather than reducing it, turning the print into a palladium image infinitely less expensive.

Serendipity against severity

Moloch. Dualtone cyanotype: 30″ bleach 1%, acetic acid 0.1%, 5′ tannic acid1%, 5′ acetic acid 0.1%. Fabriano Paper 50, 25×35cm; image dimension: 18×27cm.

Yesterday night I made some attempts with some formulas. As usual, I didn’t follow a scientific method but a creative one, letting creativity and fate play their role. I tried in the past to formalize with strictness dark room tests, but I always failed. The thing is that some of the variables are hard to control, as temperature and environment humidity. Paper characteristics change from one stock to another and little variations are amplified. Moreover, because of the never-ending number of dissimilarities, it is required an infinite patience. It would be necessary to made them change one of a time, so I’d need thousands and thousands of tests and dark room days. Obviously, only printing Stouffer palettes to have the maximum rigor and the best ease of interpretation. This way, no image will be printed and life will be spent in taking boring tests. I’m sorry, but I’m a photographer and I’m not a lab technician. Life’s too short and all of the pictures I don’t take are images lost forever.

In certain cases I rather let variables evolve and print in an intuitive, not rigorous manner. Serendipity is a gift useful as much as meticulousness, while studying alternative techniques. By the way, a similar approach is found in many other areas. A sailboat can be managed because it gives back equilibrium; controlling every detail in a so difficult system or writing motion equations would be impossible.

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