Finally the day arrived the darkroom would be all for me and I needed to make some lith prints for an exhibition. Last Tuesday I went in, first making some contact sheets of films I shot in Italy this year. Those looked promising! With a good mood I started the lith printing session only to end it rather disillusioned that very same evening. I had trouble finding the exposure time of the paper, I kept over-developing the paper time on time again which results in blocked blacks. For some reason I just couldn’t find the swing, even with negatives I printed before and had notes to refer back to. I ended the day with one print that would be a keeper. Not too shabby but far less than I normally end up with.
On top of that I ran out of chemistry and felt I was running out of paper as well. I had plenty of 18×24 but was making the bigger prints on 30×40 sheets. Luckily I still had quite a bit of 40×50 paper laying around so could’ve always cut that up. Next day at work I placed a speed-order for the paper, chemistry had already been ordered, and it took them two days to deliver the latter. The paper however still hasn’t arrived.
Last Friday I was able to take an extra day off at work to continue where I left off on Tuesday. Great! This day was definitely a whole lot more successful! I ‘finished’ the four other prints I needed for the exhibition (They still require quite a bit of work. Want to experiment a little with bleaching back certain parts and they require toning, selenium & gold, want to try a split tone) and was even able to try some photos I took in Italy this year which I shot with my new Elmarit 28mm f/2,8 on the Leica M6. This was a wonderful combination to work with, light, compact and an absolute solid friend for traveling purposes. No more dragging around the Hass with its lenses (although on the go I usually referred to the 50mm FLE only). These prints are the ones I wanna share today. They are test prints so want to work on them more but they certainly have great potential in my opinion!
General Information:
Rollei 131 Vintage FB Paper
Rollei Vintage Lith Developer 1+1+24
Average development time: 8 minutes
(average as in I’m too lazy to go look up my notes for the exact times ;-))
These are still a work in progress and will make a broader selection of images as I really like them. With the overview landscapes with mountains in the back the lith process really emphasises the clear contrasty foreground opposed to the delicate tones of the mountains in the far background. I really like this. I’m not sure if this will be for this year as it will get really busy at work now but 2013 will be MINE!
-x 🙂 x-
Photography Contrastique - Alternative Photographic Processes 