On March 9th I spent about five hours down in my darkroom and worked on some prints for the Apparitions project. I used the unsharp masks that I had previously made. Unsharp masking is a technique that is very difficult to understand and explain. I will elaborate on it in a future blog post.
These snapshots are of the prints sitting in trays of either rinse water or fixer. So there are reflections, shadows and bubbles present that will obviously not be there once the finished prints are complete.
Today, March 11th, I am returning to the darkroom to finish these prints. I left them holding in a tray of water after my first darkroom session. Yesterday I had a bunch of commitments and could not get down into the darkroom. So today I shall return.
The prints shall all see a second fixing bath, followed by a rinse in fresh water. Then they will go into a clearing bath of Hypo Clearing Agent to remove as much residual fixer as possible. That will be followed by a toning bath in Rapid Selenium Toner. This converts the metallic silver particles in the emulsion to selenium, a more stable metal. Not only does this improve longevity of the print, but it also shifts the grey tones to a colder black. This will be followed by a final rinse.
At this stage some of the prints will see selective bleaching. I will use Potassium Ferricyanide to bleach certain highlights and lighten them. This will be followed by a rinse and then all of the prints, bleached and not bleached will hit the print washer. Here they will be washed for an extensive period of about 24 hours, with multiple water changes, and gently running water for brief periods. Once that wash is complete the prints will be dried and flattened. Any that are selected for exhibition will then be dry mounted and spotted. Spotting involves using spotting dye to cover up any minor imperfections such as dust particles and other small spots.
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