Jim, had both cataracts done 2 years ago. Laser too. Glaucoma is quickly advancing. My best surgeon says early next month I need https://www.xengelstent.com/XENGelStent. Which is my only hope in right eye.
That eye now has 35mm lens coverage on a Dim 5X7 GG.
90% success, they use Ketamine, same as the Cataract surgery, means no awareness yet awake...
However Glaucoma is incurable, both parents had it bad...
Tin Can
My thoughts and prayers are with you. I wish you only the best of outcomes.
...somewhere I have an albumen print toned with mercuric chloride - a rich, burgundy-brown. If I can find it I will post. But...oh, so very toxic! Will never do this again!
What has messed up many of Watkin's prints is moisture-related mildew foxing. What makes his remaining big albumens so specially valuable is that most of them were destroyed in the 1906 SF earthquake and fire. My little collection of antique albumen prints all still look perfect.
I ended up trying this myself and have some results. I opted for the "Gold-Ammonium Thiocyanate Toner II: POP Formula" recipe from Christopher James' Alternative Photographic Processes book. I chose this formula because it allows you to keep a shelf-stable gold toner in two parts and mix just as much as you need and is supposed to create cooler tones in albumin prints. The mix only lasts a few hours and gold is expensive so this seemed like the best bet.
First, the untoned albumin print:
Here are two gold-toned versions.
The right was toned for 30 min in the book's recommended 50ml A : 50ml B : 900ml water dilution. The color is a lot cooler and the contrast is a bit better but it is still distinctly brown.
The left was toned for 30 min in 3x strength solution (150ml:150ml:900ml). This gets very dark purplish black, similar to watkins' prints. I tried the stronger solution based on this quote from James M. Reilly's The Albumen & Salted Paper Book: "Toning baths for matte salted papers should contain .1 to .2 g gold chloride per liter of toning solution, while glossy albumen paper toners should contain between .4 and .5 g gold chloride per liter of toning solution."
Here is a comparison of my 3x strength toned print to a random Watkins photo from one of my books of his work:
They are pretty close. My blacks aren't as dark and is maybe my midtones are more purple, but then this is comparing a real albumin print to a reproduction in a book so it's apples to oranges.
I don't know how accurate the book reproduction is. Most of the many actual Watkins prints I've seen are the basic brownish. Albumen is certainly a beautiful process. Most gold toner formulas I've read waste gold like crazy; but I'm admittedly not an albumen printer myself. Wish I was.
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