Albumen Experiments

[alec4444]

June 23, 2006: Started a thread about getting into ULF from Medium Format. If you read that, the intent was to get into doing albumen prints.

September 23, 2006: Got the 11x14 Camera

September 28, 2006: Got my first lens

October 16, 2006: Got an image on my first 11x14 negative

December 12, 2006: Got a bunch of filmholders.

March 7, 2007: Made a big batch of albumen.

June 6, 2007: My first cyanotypes.

December 25, 2007: Got a tripod head for the Reis A100

August 16, 2008: Got some silver nitrate, sodium thiosulfate, etc.

August 17, 2008: Finally made an albumen print!!!!



Well, sorta. It wasn't exactly like the prints I saw at the Met's 1840-1940 exhibit yesterday, but I'm highly encouraged!

I used the float technique for the albumen coating. It went without a hitch, though the first few sheets I had done would have gone smoother if I had waited for the bubbles in the albumen to clear on their own.

Clearly, it was the silver coating that went awry. To be cheap, I only made 125ml of silver solution, and opted to brush it on. I got thee whole surface of the paper visibly wet, and thus all looked good.

My first exposure showed otherwise. There were stripes in the paper the width of my hake brush. It was as though the silver wasn't mixed properly, with some strokes having silver and others more water.

I made most of my prints up anyway, not really knowing what else to do. Christopher James mentioned in his alt process book that the paper won't last, and advised to "print quickly" less the paper begins printing out on it's own. The last two sheets I had began to do that....they were turning yellow with the same stripes I had before. "Screw it!" I exclaimed, frustrated and losing sun. I coated the last two sheets again, this time much more liberally.

Surprising enough, I was rewarded with better prints! I'm sure you'll be able to pick those two out.

I was struck that the finish on all these prints were a bit flatter than I had anticipated. They were not matte, but they weren't exactly glossy either. Maybe more like "pearl". Next week, I will make two major alterations: 1) Double albumen coat 2) floating technique for the silver nitrate.

Anyway, I'm totally jazzed about this process, and can't wait to get a technique down. Been dreaming about these types of prints for over two years, and it's nice to finally get going!!!!

Cheers!
--A

[alec4444]

Couple others...

[snuck]

Looks good to me. I should try this.

[CG]

Very exciting. Congrats!

C

[alec4444]

Thanks! In thinking over what may have happened in the first run, I have a hypothesis: In brush coating, some of the albumen came off on the brush, turning it brown. (making silver albumenate). What this means is that as I brushed, the concentration of silver was strong at the beginning, and then weakened as the silver reacted with the albumen left on the brush. Therefore, the paper may have looked wet, but the silver was more on one side that the other. (See photo 3. I did a couple strokes in the opposite direction, but not many...) The strokes I made were even and one-directional, leaving more silver on one side of the paper than the other.

So, brush coating may be fine, but it will need to be bi-directional to achieve an even coating of silver. Steaming the albumen may also help to harden it so that less comes off when applying the silver.

Sounds good on paper, eh? :D

--A

[Flexnib]

Hi Alec,
Nice job. Glad to see you are up and running.
Arthur

[David A. Goldfarb]

Good to see another albumenist testing the waters. Check out Reilly's book at albumen.stanford.edu for lots of useful info. One of the things it describes is how to clear the silver nitrate solution with kaolin, so that you can make a larger batch and reuse it.

The albumen needs to be hardened before sensitizing. Methods are: steaming (which I do, because the paper usually needs to be steamed anyway before sensitizing with the float method), alcohol bath (which means standing over an alcohol bath), and aging (which I also do by default, since I make albumenized paper in large batches when I can).

The paper needs to be sensitized in one smooth motion. Any kind of brush or coating rod technique that doesn't do the whole sheet in one pass will leave marks and wicking effects. Floating is the traditional method, which I use. John Coffer glues two sheets back to back with rubber cement (or maybe folds one sheet in half and glues the three open sides), submerges the paper, and cuts away the glued portion when dry. I've heard of people using a coating rod in one pass by putting down a line of silver nitrate solution at one edge of the paper and pulling it to the other edge. With any method, you always have to coat larger than the final sheet, and then cut the edges. A large sloppy border will cost you, if you gold tone.

I sensitize the night before I print, so the paper dries thoroughly, and there's no risk of damage to the negative. I don't use anything between the negative and the paper, because it reduces sharpness. I use citric acid in the silver nitrate solution as a preservative, and don't have a problem with base fog waiting a day.

As the paper ages, the main thing you lose is speed. I've tested sensitized paper that was three months old, and it printed, but it was about two stops slower than freshly sensitized paper. The small amount of base fog that develops with the paper stored in the dark over that time is bleached out anyway by toning and fixing.

[Vaughn]

Congrats from an old carbon printer. Anything worth doing takes time and effort.

Vaughn

[eddie]

great stuff alec!

my albumen has aged (only a week) but i plan to try some this week.

thanks for all the suggestions.

eddie

[Pete Roody]

I recognize the shot from Eastern State Penitentiary. Great stuff. Please post images as you progress your technique.

[j.e.simmons]

I use a Richeson 9010 brush to sensitize my albumen paper and don't have any problems since determining the optimum amount of sensitizer to use. I use many, not one, pass to coat. I think you just have to work out what works for you in your conditions.
juan

[alec4444]

...the experiments continue.....

Last weekend, I tried a couple new techniques. I:

--Hardened the emulsion through steaming the albumen paper prior to coating with silver
--Tried double-coating the albumen
--Tried applying silver nitrate via "floating" instead of brush coating

Results attached.

Hardening the emulsion made a big difference, regardless of how the silver nitrate was applied. The coating of silver seemed to apply much more evenly, and less albumen came off the paper onto the brush.

Double coating didn't really seem to do a whole lot, even though I steamed the paper between coats. Took another glance at Christopher James' book, and that may well be due to the fact that I'm using watercolor paper instead of "good quality drawing paper or writing paper." The portrait shot here was double coated fairly well, as was the shot with the buildings and trees. This is a different stock of watercolor paper than the larger, 11x14 shots. (5x7s were Fabriano Aquarello, 11x14 was Arches Aquarelle) I'm betting the type of paper makes a big difference.

Brush coating vs. floating for silver nitrate did make a difference, although my brush technique and steam hardening probably improved results as well. The portrait and the bridge images were brushed, this time WAY more liberally. The other two shots were floated. See the diagonal stain in the trees, and that terrible blotchiness in the central park shot? That's due to getting silver nitrate on the back of the paper prior to printing. In other cases, I got albumen on the back of the paper, but that didn't seem to make much of a difference. Silver nitrate is a whole other story, so extreme care should be used in the floating technique. Where the image wasn't stained, the coating did come out far more evenly.

Couple other notes:
--Trees shot was over exposed. Doesn't look bad in the photo complements of the digital flash. Exposure in general is a lot easier to judge than in say, cyanotypes. The fixing does lighten the image a bit (haven't tried toning yet) but it's about a stop or a stop and a half.
--Stain on the portrait is (I THINK) due to a pool of albumen that build up by accident. When the paper is coated, the edges curl up, forming pools for the inattentive coater. Note the glossier finish on this print, as the double albumen coating seems to have had some effect.
--Blur in the center of the bridge shot (err, I think) is due to my impatience in not allowing the silver nitrate to fully dry. I hurried things up a bit with a hairdryer (no cool setting) and the heat did not seem to make a difference.
--Negative makes a big difference. You can wax lyrical about "long tonal scales", but the fact of the matter is that all of these shots were exposed on Efke film and developed in Rodinal, and it's the contrasty negatives that fared better! :D

Still thoroughly enjoying this. I'll be sure to post more updates of further experiments, good or otherwise. Also hoping to give salted paper prints a go this upcoming weekend.

Cheers!
--A

[PViapiano]

Is that 3rd shot the one you sent out for the LF print exchange? Looks familiar to me...

[David A. Goldfarb]

The third shot's from the LF outing in Central Park a while back, no?

Generally albumen on the back of the paper is to be avoided. It usually causes a blank spot on the print, but with thicker paper, you may have been lucky if it didn't soak all the way through. Traditional albumen prints are on thin smooth paper, and thin paper is easier to float.

As you've noticed, silver nitrate on the back isn't good either. I would just discard a sheet that had albumen or silver nitrate on the back, or cut a piece or two or three from it avoiding that spot and use it for smaller negs.

If you tone and fix (and if you don't tone, the prints won't last very long), you lose about two stops of density, so the print should look about two stops overexposed coming out of the print frame. Usually you'll see a bronzing effect in the densest part of the print in the film rebate.

[alec4444]

Hey Guys,

Yup, the third shot was a print from the last print exchange. The bridge shot was used for a print exchange before the trees. I tend to recycle images I like! :D

David, thanks for your tips! The kaolin should be arriving this week. What type of paper were you using for your prints? And how were you toning them? Gold toner seems to be the predominant choice, but it looks like I need to mix it myself AND it looks expensive...

Interesting you'd say that they wouldn't last without toning....I went to that Met Museum exhibit and would have sworn the albumen there wasn't toned.....but I don't know that for sure. What could they have been doing differently?

Cheers!
--A

[David A. Goldfarb]

Virtually all traditional albumen prints are toned, mostly gold toned. You can find out about this sort of thing from Reilly's book.

Gold toner is simple to mix, but it is indeed expensive and has a short tray life, so you end up planning printing sessions around the toner. I stocked up on gold chloride a while back as the price was beginning to climb and hope I can sell some prints to justify buying more. I've gotten a good price from www.mostlymetals.com. He's an alt-process printer himself and tries to combine orders for different artists to buy in quantity and passes the savings on to the purchaser.

As a test, I've tried selenium toning albumen prints. It's not quite as warm as gold-borax toner, but it's not too bad, and it's a good way to experiment without spending a fortune on gold chloride.

I use Strathmore 500 single-ply plate finish, which is the most similar to traditional albumen papers. Heavier papers can have a nice look, but they tend to curl more when you float them. Maybe Coffer's method of immersing the paper would work better with heavier papers.

[j.e.simmons]

Look up Clerc's gold toner.
juan

[alec4444]

Thanks guys. I re-read the formula for the gold toner and it looks like it goes a long way. Gonna continue the "experiments", and when I begin to achieve consistent results, I'll get the toning going.

Got the kaolin today, which I'll dutifully add to my silver nitrate. Question, though - Christopher James (my full-time instructor, it seems) suggests siphoning the silver nitrate/kaolin mixture to avoid getting the kaolin onto the paper.

From what I know about kaolin (read: very little), it seems it's a pretty neutral clay that is oftentimes used in paper.....so why/how would it affect my albumen prints? I don't have a siphon, and I can't quite picture myself sucking on the end of a straw to try to "prime" a siphon....particularly with a caustic chemical at the other end. I see two possible non-siphon solutions: 1) use a brush directly from the settled solution. This requires storing the silver nitrate solution in a wide-mouthed container. 2) pour the solution into a tray (for floating) and allowing enough time for the kaolin to settle.

Any other techniques used?

Cheers!
--A

[David A. Goldfarb]

I decant it several times before reusing, and filter the last pour back into the original bottle through a paper towel in a funnel. I haven't set up a siphon. If you siphon, decanting is a bit easier, because it doesn't stir things up on the bottom, and the Kaolin is very fine. As I recall, there's a description of a siphon that uses a pump (you could also just use a bottle that has a pump, like what they use for dispensing soap or ketchup or whatever) in Reilly's book.

Kaolin is neutral, but it will change the texture of the print I suspect. To make matte albumen prints, cornstarch is added to the albumen, and kaolin might have a similar effect.

Some bottles are nicely sloped for decanting. The first bottle I use was a 1.75 liter bottle of Boodles gin. Start making the martinis now. I recommend three parts Boodles, one part Noilly Prat dry vermouth, shaken in a cocktail shaker with ice, and a couple of picholine olives in the glass.