sizing – Koraks tinkers

Full bloom – DAS carbon starting to come together

I’ll probably jinx it by saying this, but…I have a feeling my DAS carbon printing workflow is really starting to get somewhere. Maybe I should take a moment to reflect on some of the key lessons learned. Perhaps even muse a little on what’s next, too…

Puzzling paper problem – A carbon transfer print surface anomaly

There has been this tiny problem bugging me for a couple of months. It popped up when I moved to DAS sensitized tissue for my carbon transfer prints. Some sort of micro-scale unevenness in tone. It reminded me a little bit of some form of reticulation – but not quite. But I think I’ve cracked this nut now, and it’s actually much more obvious and benign than I had imagined it to be.

Easy way out – Inkjet on ‘DIY’ papers

No, I haven’t given up on color carbon yet. But as I was messing with the inkjet printer anyway, making hundreds of digital negatives and greyscale tests, at some point I got experimental in that direction as well. You see, the thing with inkjet is that I just don’t like most inkjet papers. They’re very high-tech and offer great gamut and dmax. But they don’t have much subtlety to them and the paper surface is always lifeless to me. The exception is the (rather pricey) inkjet baryta papers that indeed resemble fiber-based B&W papers. But couldn’t we expand our choices a bit, perhaps by trying something ourselves? Well, turns out, we can…read on!

Relieved

Today, I decided to straighten a print I made yesterday from the series on corn I’ve been working on. When rewetting the print for taping it down, I couldn’t help but noticing the relief on the wet print, which stands out particularly nicely on this one. Look:

Making black, making white

There are many things to like about carbon transfer printing (and at least as many to dislike about it…). One of them is that essentially, you’re making the black and the white separately and then marry them when making the actual transfer. The black is the tissue, the white is the final support. Combined, they make for a continuous tone image. Pretty neat if you consider that they start out as pure black and pure white!