From: sparks@col.hp.com (John Sparks)
Subject: Re: selenium wash
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 17:42:27 GMT
Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division

In article <1992Aug26.203916.13174@odin.corp.sgi.com> donl@glass.esd.sgi.com (donl mathis) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug26.173212.26513@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk>,
>jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>
>|> > noticeable.  If you can`t get hold of "The Print" and want to know the
>|> > Adams procedure, send me some mail, I'll look it up.
>|> 
>|> Which reminds me of something else in that book.  He describes a procedure
>|> he calls "clearing the whites" - dunking the print in dilute reducer after
>|> fixing.  This was intended to produce more brilliant highlights.  He writes
>|> as if he did it routinely.  I have never seen that recommended anywhere
>|> else or heard of anyone else doing it.  Was it required because Adams'
>|> paper/developer combination was exceptionally prone to fog, or what?
>|> Anyone out there do it?
>
>Are you sure this was Adams book you're thinking of?  I've heard of
>other photographers routinely using reducers, but what I remember of
>The Print is that Adams didn't really like reducers, and used them as a
>last resort.  I don't recall any statements about "clearing the
>whites"; in fact, a large part of the discussion is on how to get the
>whites right to begin with.  He has a section on reducers that gave me
>the impression he didn't trust them, and avoided them as much as
>possible.

I just got back from a John Sexton workshop and he often uses Farmers 
Reducer on prints.  In general, he only uses it locally to lighten or
increase contrast in small areas (he swabbs it on with a brush on a wet
print with water running over the print).  I'm pretty sure he said Ansel
also used this procedure, it would not have been on every print and would
not generally have been over the entire print, but to help with problem
areas or to increase yield on large print runs.  Cleaning the highlights
is probably a good way to describe the results.

John said to carefully hypo clear and wash the prints after using reducer
because there is some chance of staining from this procedure.  Eugene Smith
was photographer who was heavy into bleaching, generally making dark prints
that he cleaned up with bleach (but didn't wash them enough and now many are
fading or yellowing).  John Sexton said that some photographer friend of
his has some philosophical need to make straight prints (i.e those without
burning or dodging, no selective modification of the light path from image 
to print), but use lots of reducer to get the effects they want (I can't
remember if he said who this was or not).

As I remembered from Ansel's books, he didn't trust reducers or normal
intensifiers on NEGATIVES.  He did sometimes use Selenium as an intensifier
on negatives after he and John Sexton worked out the procedure when they
were working on the book _The_Negative_ in the new series.  John extended
the procedure to include intensifying small areas of the negatives which
he said Ansel never used, but would have if it had been worked out earlier.

>Adams' papers and developer were nothing terribly unusual, especially
>in the middle/later years -- Dektol, Ilford Galerie, stuff like that.
>Apparently, once he convinced himself that the exotic developers of
>Certain Other Photographers didn't produce better looking prints than
>Dektol, he stuck with the packaged stuff.  His craft must have lain
>somewhere other than exotic chemistry!

We used a lot of chemicals I had never used before at the workshop, but
they were all packaged from Kodak except for the plain hypo he used for
his second fixing bath (supposed to remove risk of print staining when
selenium toning).  Even his reducer is sold premixed by Kodak.

John Sparks
Newsgroups: rec.photo