Digital BW, The Print

On 8/14/13 9:52 AM, "Mark Savoia" <mark@...> wrote:

>I assume the green silver prints you remember were on Kodak papers only?
>Agfa and Ilford had some pretty "neutral gray" tones before any toning.
>It also mattered on what developers you were using. We still print silver
>here for clients and the only real reason for doing a slight selenium
>toning is for archival reasons, not to get the print to be more "neutral".

I printed on virtually every paper that existed during the 80's and 90's.
Kodak, Ilford, Afga, Seagull, several of the Eastern European papers
foisted on a gullible public as "quality B&W papers", and a sea of papers
for which I have forgotten the names. There was never any such thing as a
neutral paper. Just some that were less green. As a side note, ALL B&W
photographic materials are/were green, film included.

Mark, if you are making untoned silver prints for clients, you are doing
them a disservice. Untoned silver prints are substantially less permanent
than toned prints. No silver print should ever be hung on a gallery wall
or sold to a client as art, without toning. Even a visually undetectable
selenium toning provides adequate protection. (Try a 1:20 dilution for a
minute or so.)

Also, you may think you are making neutral, untoned silver prints for your
clients, but I promise you, they are green!

Initially, selenium toning was not applied for the primary purpose of
making prints more neutral. It was applied to get rid of the green and add
a little purple and then to make the prints more permanent (though the
latter wasn't known initially).

If you are really convinced you are making non-green silver prints for
clients, try this experiment: make two identical prints, both at the same
time, both through the same process, both never dried, both straight from
the second fixing bath. Place one in a tray of water, the other in a 1:10
selenium bath (make sure the trays are identical, preferably white),
agitate constantly. Watch both under the same STRONG light. Keep looking
back and forth between them (this is the standard method for selenium
toning anyway, because changes are generally subtle and watching an
untoned print is the only way to see the change). Don't worry about how
purple the selenium print gets, just keep watching the other print and
comparing. Eventually, you will see the green. It was plainly there to see
without all this effort in the first place, but our visual cortex(s) fool
us. The selenium trick shocks one's vision into seeing what one is
generally not inclined to see. It's just like walking into a room full of
fluorescent lights from outdoors. The mind doesn't let you see the
overwhelming green color of the fluorescents, but it is there nonetheless,
and far. Far stronger than the green in an untoned B&W print.

One last note. Silver gelatin B&W prints tend to have weak blacks, despite
high dMax (Personally, I do not worship at the altar of dMax). Selenium
toning dramatically improves the look of silver-gelatin blacks and
therefore is indispensable for this additional reason. The only valid
reason for a fine art silver print NOT to be toned in selenium is because
some other toner was used instead.

David Kachel

___________________

Artist-Photographer
Fine B&W Photographs

www.davidkachel.com
david@...

Gallery:
www.reddoorfinephotographs.com
director@...

PO Box  1893
Alpine, TX 79831
(432) 386-5787