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| 1. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Salt print Provided by the artist - Terry King The earliest print is a salt print, the positive part of the Fox Talbot's calotype. You will notice the glorious range of tone and the subtlety of gradation, which results from the negative reflecting the optimum density range for the process. |
| 2. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Albumen print Provided by the artist - Terry King The albumen print overtook the salt print in the early 1850s. In essence the straight albumen print is a salt print made using denatured albumen or white of egg. This gives a smoother surface that was thought to give the detail that was expected from a print made from a collodion negative. |
| 3. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Albumen arrowroot print Provided by the artist - Terry King As customers became more used to the glossy prints made using the albumen process, improvements were sought. In the case of the albumen print, one approach was to give texture to the shadows by including a custard made from arrowroot, a transparent glaze used in cooking, in the size. This was the albumen arrowroot print. |
| 4. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Cyanotype Provided by the artist - Terry King Daguerre and Talbot's announcements of their methods of making photographs acted as a catalyst to further experiment. Ponton announced the results of his experiments with dichromates as early as 1839 but it was Herschel's paper of 1842 which led to the processes where iron salts provide the light sensitivity which when combined with other salts give prints of different colours. The first one we illustrate here is the cyanotype that is one of the simplest and safest processes. The old complaint was that they were blue, (this was the blue print process), but there are ways of changing the colour. Here is an original blue one. |
| 5. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Cyanotype rex Provided by the artist - Terry King A cyanotype rex which gives far more flexibility and is far faster than the original process, the process uses a different iron salt. |
| 6. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Chrysotype rex Provided by the artist - Terry King In the chrysotype rex gold salts are used. The dilutions needed to make these prints are such that it is fairly inexpensive to use. Different colours can be obtained depending on the temperature during processing. |
| 7. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Autotype carbon tissue print Provided by the artist - Terry King A significant problem was that, as working methods had not been well enough established to give consistent quality, many albumen prints faded. Other methods than those using silver salts were looked for. The first successful commercial method of making non-silver prints was Swan's carbon print of 1864 that was first marketed by the Autotype Company that continued to make carbon tissue until 2009. At the end the tissue was made for the copper plate gravure process. Carbon referred to the carbon black pigment originally used as the pigment where the varying thickness of dichromated gelatine gave the gradations in the print. The print here was made using Autotype carbon tissue for gravure. The process gives probably the best results of any photographic printing process and it will accept negatives of a density range of up to 2.8. The pigment, iron oxide, discolours as the copper plate is etched. As it gives the burnt sienna of renaissance drawings, I am happy to use it. |
| 8. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Copper plate gravure Provided by the artist - Terry King As we have said, carbon tissue was not only made for making prints using a transfer method to make prints on paper, but when the picture was transferred to an aquatinted plate and then etched, a continuous tone image was produced in intaglio which gave 'ink on paper' prints. Etching through the varying thicknesses of the gelatine gives a corresponding variation in the depth of the etch which results in varying depths of tone in the final print. Intaglio itself is the method of printing where ink is in the etch below the surface of the plate. The plate is polished clean before the plate and paper are passed through the press when the ink is forced out of the grooves and transferred to the paper. This is unlike the lithographic processes where the ink is on the surface of the plate. |
| 9. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Platinum print Provided by the artist - Terry King In the 1870s Willis developed Herschel's original experiments from 1842 to produce the platinum print which, beside carbon, became the fashionable printing process for the top end of the market. It could not accept the density range of the carbon process but the combination of the subtlety of its tones, tactility and density range have still to be surpassed. |
| 10. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Dichromate gum print Provided by the artist - Terry King Silver gelatine film and silver gelatine paper gave faster speeds, ease of operation and printing which reduced costs and spread photography to the amateur market , 'You press the button and we'll do the rest'. This led gifted and rich amateurs to seek something more artistic and in accordance with art fashions such as Japonaiserie and impressionism. Prominent among these processes was gum bichromate printing where the printer could choose the colours, the sharpness and the tones. In this case the pigment was incorporated in the dichromated gum which hardened in proportion to the light. |
| 11. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Gum print using beaten whole egg as the medium Provided by the artist - Terry King Other media with long chain molecules could be used, one person made 'gum' prints with casein from her own mothers-milk others used other bodily fluids but the one illustrated here followed on from the albumen example. Gum prints using denatured egg white give a very sharp image but using the whole egg, tempera, can also give perfectly good prints on watercolour paper. |
| 12. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Bromoil print Provided by the artist - Terry King The "control" pioneers such as Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Robert Demachy (1859-1936), soon became bored with gum printing and went on to oil printing and the Bromoil where the lithographic qualities inherent in the silver gelatine photograph were used to make prints using printers' ink. Here is a bromoil as an example, the visible image is made from etching ink after the silver has been bleached out. These prints could also be run through an etching press to produce a bromoil transfer print. |
| 13. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Van Dyke print Provided by the artist - Terry King One of the disadvantages of the salt print was that one had to coat the paper with salt first and then sensitise it with silver nitrate to give a silver chloride print. A process developed by Mr Nicol enabled the paper to be coated with only one coat. The process was essentially a variation on Herschel's iron based processes but using silver nitrate as the metal salt to make the final picture. Not only was Nicol's process too late to compete with platinum but his methods of fixing the image were not very effective. Over the years a number of processes have been developed from Nicol's original including the Kallitype and the Van Dyke print. Here is a Van Dyke print otherwise known as brown print or even as a Kallitype I. It is probably, after the cyanotype, the easiest process with which to get good results. |
| 14. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Kallitype print Provided by the artist - Terry King The difficulty is that although the kallitypes can give startlingly beautiful results which can rival platinum the results are neither predictable nor consistent. Later developments of the kallitype use a range of developers to give different very subtle changes in the perceived colour, here is one using sodium formate as the developer which is said to give a blue tone. |
| 15. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Silverex print Provided by the artist - Terry King Those with enquiring minds will wonder if one can take different chemicals and processes and do a little experimentation. One interesting experiment is go take platinum printing out processes and use them to develop out and vice versa. Here is what looks like a platinum print but was made using the standard Willis platinum method but substituting a silver salt for the platinum - it has been suggested that this should be called a 'Silverex'. |
| 16. |  | Terry King n.d. The south aisle of Chichester Cathedral Gum print over a cyanotype Provided by the artist - Terry King Another variation is to mix and match the processes themselves, gum under or over platinum, Van Dyke over gum or even platinum over bromoil. Here is a gum print over a cyanotype. |