Thought I’d have a go at Salt printing today.
A quick visit to the corner shop for some table salt. I already had silver nitrate.
The paper is just some old WHSmiths ring bound scrap book paper.
11g Silver Nitrate in 80ml Distilled H2O
10g Salt in 500ml of Distilled Water
PreWash salt bath
I used a very dilute Rapid Fix due to the lack of Sodium Thiosulphate. Maybe not a good idea but when needs must.
Paper was immersed in the salt solution for 5 minutes and then hung to dry. Coated with a cotton wool pad and one with a brush.
Contact printed with window light. Overcast at midday, North light. Exposures of 30 -40 minutes.
When wet they had this lovely warm red/brown colour.
When dry though its dark? brown but with less contrast.
This one though from a glass dry plate neg has a totally different tone.
It dried much greyer than the previous print. I wonder why?
The other prints are from old digital negs for cyanotype and Van Dyke Browns that I had in a drawer.
So a quick exercise to see if the chem theory etc was right. It all seems to work just need to do it properly next time.
These look great Tony, I’ve got some watercolour paper salted and ready to go, just need to brush them up with silver nitrate. Hoping for better results than what I had with cyanotypes!
Good to hear from you Moiz.
What problem did you have with your cyanotypes?
Mostly I just couldn’t seem to get any consistency. I tried multiple (albeit cheap) watercolour papers, some soaked in an acid bath, some not, some exposed in sunlight, others under a 6 tube BL setup. I got lovely blues one day, and the image washed off the next. Finally got frustrated and thought I’d leave it till the summer when we (fingers crossed) have more sun!
Let me know how it goes, I’m not a huge fan of cyanotypes but will be doing some next week along with some VDB’s.
Then onto albumen.
Ha, neither am I currently! Hopefully the salt prints will help to inspire me again.