Introduction to Pt/Pd Printing

Introduction
This manual is designed to serve as an outline of the techniques presented in a two or three day course covering the basics of the Pt/Pd printing process. It is not intended to be a comprehensive overview of the current practice of this process, but rather is a personal and perhaps idiosyncratic description of the procedures that I currently use in my own work. The methods I will show you are certainly not the only ones that will work, and there are other practitioners who work using dierent techniques yet also achieve ne results. I encourage you to use this guide a starting point to eventually develop your own unique method of working. Read the books listed in the appendix for dierent views on how to make the process work. Try the dierent techniques that the authors of these books and resources illustrate. Make many prints. Each print you make will teach you a little more. Eventually, you will get to the point where you have integrated a whole host of information and knowledge into your own personal workow. When you reach that point, you really can begin to use the process to produce your own art. Your rst prints from this workshop will be an object of amazement and pride to you. You will have stepped beyond a boundary that few cross. Pt/Pd printing allows you to get rid of the middleman. No longer will you have to depend on Kodak or Ilford to supply you with the materials you need to make truly beautiful photographs. With the advent of digital printing and the gradual disappearance of traditional silver-gelatin papers, Pt/Pd printing allows you to truly get back to the future and use a 19th century technique to produce stunning 21st century photographs. At the same time, the newer digital techniques oer an amazing tool to allow you to easily make the negatives needed to make your prints. I will nish this introduction with one suggestion. If this process is one that grabs your imagination and seems that it will be something you want to pursue further, be

sure and save your rst prints from this workshop. Pull them out after printing for a year or two and compare them to your current work. You will be amazed at how your technique will improve with just simple practice.

Overview of the process

The basics of the process are simple. You will coat a piece of watercolor paper with a solution that combines a light sensitive compound called ferric oxalate with a solution of platinum or palladium metal. After drying the solution and allowing the metal and ferric oxalate to soak into the bers of the paper, you will put a negative in rm contact with the paper and expose it to ultraviolet light. This ultraviolet (UV) light converts the ferric oxalate to ferrous oxalate in proportion to the amount of UV light it receives. Clear areas of the negative (i.e. the shadow areas) receive the most light and therefore convert the most ferric oxalate to ferrous oxalate. Conversely, the dense areas of the negative (i.e. the highlights) receive the least amount of light and thus very little of the ferric oxalate is converted to ferrous oxalate. After exposure, you will put the print into a tray and pour a developer over the print. The print develops instantly as the ferrous oxalate is converted back to ferric oxalate by the chemical action of the developer. But the magic occurs with this chemical reaction, because the conversion of ferrous oxalate back to ferric oxalate also causes the platinum or palladium metal to precipitate out of solution and create a deposit of pure metallic particles in the bers of the paper. These particles form the platinum or palladium image. At this point, all that remains is for you to put the print through a series of clearing baths that will remove the unused ferric oxalate from the bers of the paper. Once the clearing is accomplished, all that remains is the original watercolor paper with an image formed by inert, extremely archival platinum or palladium particles. Since platinum and palladium are noble metals, they are extremely non-reactive if subsequently exposed to other chemical compounds. This feature is

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what makes the platinum palladium print one of the more archival photographic processes. Strengths Long scale process. The Pt/Pd print is naturally a very low contrast printing process, and thus requires a correspondingly high contrast negative. When using large in-camera negatives, this means that platinum printers can photograph with impunity very high contrast scenes without getting blocked up shadows and blown-out highlights. Making photographs directly into the sun or photographing dark interiors with exterior views through windows is much less of a technical dilemma than with the traditional silver gelatin process, where photographers wrestle with many techniques designed to reduce the contrast of the negative in order to achieve a printable result

Very brief history of the process

Platinum/palladium printing is an old photographic process that represented the sine qua non of photographic printing practice at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th century. It was considered to be one of the most elegant of the sharper photorealistic processes available at the time, the others being albumen, carbon and photogravure. Platinum paper was commercially manufactured until World War I, when platinum became a strategic metal used as a component in the trigger mechanisms of artillery shells and other munitions. Another factor in its relatively sudden disappearance as a printing process was the fact that the only sources of platinum bearing ore were found in mines in Russia. The chaos surrounding the communist revolution in November 1917 made the cost of platinum metal skyrocket. The subsequent loss of readily available platinum papers gave an added push to the just-then-emerging silver gelatin gaslight papers, which could be exposed with the articial lights that were simultaneously beginning to change the character of the night in the major cities of the world. The modern platinum revival in the United States began in the early 1970s when George Tice, Irving Penn and a few others researched the historical literature on the platinum process and began to print their work again in platinum (and palladium). Since that revival, the skill and quality of the platinum work has advanced to a point that equals and (in my opinion) occasionally surpasses the work from a hundred years ago.

Strengths and weaknesses of the process

Like anything in life, the Pt/Pd process has advantages and drawbacks. Many of the traditional disadvantages have recently become moot with the advent of digital photographic techniques.

Weaknesses

Archival process This has been discussed earlier, but the properly processed Pt/Pd print consists only of paper with particles of chemically inert metal embedded in the paper bers. This is in contrast to the silver gelatin print, which contains a chemically reactive layer of silver embedded in a layer of gelatin. The gelatin is an organic compound that can be attacked by mold, while the silver particles can react quite easily with atmospheric pollutants. Low Dmax or Not as black as silver. The Pt/Pd print generally has a so-called maximum black that has a measured reection density of about 1.4 LogD as compared to 1.9-2.1 for a glossy silver gelatin print. This criticism is accurate, but in my opinion not par-

Beautiful process This is admittedly a biased opinion from someone who clearly loves the process, but the platinum palladium print has a velvety richness, depth and tactility to the print that is unmatched in the world of traditional silver gelatin. I believe this is because in the silver gelatin print, the image forming metal is contained in thin layer of gelatin that is on top of the paper base, while in the platinum print, the metal particles are absorbed deeply into the paper bers, resulting in a depth and richness that is more akin to a watercolor painting or ink-on-paper lithograph.

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ticularly relevant. To my eye, a good platinum print is black enough to convince me. A platinum print simply does not look like a silver gelatin print. If it did, we would be idiots for going to the trouble to make one. The reason for this is not because of the process itself, but rather is due to the fact that we make our prints on watercolor paper with a surface texture as opposed to the glossy surface of a silver gelatin print. Indeed, the maximum black of a Pt/Pd print is about the same as a silver gelatin print made on a non-reective matte surface paper. Some practitioners have made platinum prints on xed out glossy photo paper and achieved maximum black values that exceed those of silver gelatin. But if your photographic goal is to achieve the blackest of blacks, then platinum is probably not for you. Shadow contrast is low. This is also a somewhat accurate criticism. The Pt/Pd process generally has what is called a pronounced shoulder on the print response curve. What this means is that in general, the shadow contrast will lower than a comparable silver gelatin print. I will be teaching a few techniques to minimize this eect during the printing process. With the advent of digital negative making techniques, we can now easily negate this effect by creating a negative that has higher shadow contrast built into the negative that will compensate for the lower shadow contrast that can occur while printing. in the negative eectively invisible. Some of this concern is really image dependent. An image that requires super high resolution of ne detail to work may not be an ideal candidate for printing in platinum-palladium. In other words, if you gotta have super sharp prints, then this process may not be your cup of tea.

Time consuming and costly. Again, these are somewhat accurate criticisms. However, if materials are bought in quantity, the per-print cost can be quite comparable with silver gelatin. Remarkably, with digital negative making techniques, I nd that I can make a negative that prints perfectly the rst time, which saves a tremendous amount of time in the darkroom. Anyone who has struggled to make the perfect silver print in the wet darkroom can appreciate this. It is not uncommon for me to go into the darkroom with six or seven digital negatives and emerge two hours later with six or seven prints that are exhibition quality. There is no way I can ever achieve this sort of productivity in traditional silver gelatin printing. Clearly, I am an enthusiastic practitioner and an unabashed apologist for the Pt/Pd process. I hope you will end up loving this process as much as I do.

Sharpness. Sometimes people point out that a platinum print is not as sharp as a silver gelatin print of the same size. This is really a function of the paper you choose when you make the print. Some of the watercolor papers we use have a fair amount of surface texture and they will not yield as sharp a print as a silver gelatin print. On the other hand, a vellum can be used for making a platinum print, and can yield a very sharp print. This perceived lack of sharpness is normally not an issue except to an inveterate print-snier, and it has been my experience that they nd something wrong with damn near anything printed by someone else. The texture can also serve as an advantage in that it can make small defects

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Getting Ready to Print

Consumable Materials list
Quality watercolor paper Ferric oxalate sensitizer compound

Equipment list
Richeson 9010 brush Small shot glass Dropper bottles for solution 4 trays

Palladium and/or platinum metal solution compound Na2 contrast enhancer (sodium chloroplatinate) EDTA tetrasodium Citric acid Oxalic acid Hypoclear Ivory black Winsor and Newton watercolor tube Paper cupcake tin liners Potassium oxalate or Ammonium citrate developer

Droppers and/or pipettes and pump Washing tray or print washer UV light source Contact printing frame

#000 ne spotting brush

#11 X-acto knife and blades Electric fan

Burnt Umber Winsor and Newton watercolor tube Basket style coee lters

Dedicated hair dryer with temperature control Large pyrex measuring cup 8 cup model with lid is ideal

Inexpensive microwave oven for heating water and developer Some small mixing beakers Stir rods for mixing solutions

Small scale the 200g models that measure to 0.1g accuracy are ideal Plastic gallon jugs with watertight tops to use to store the developer

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One other trick that I will mention in regard to paper characteristics is an easy test to determine what will probably be the best way of coating and drying the paToday, there are a huge number of papers that can be per. If you put a piece of the paper in a deep tray of water, used to make platinum prints. The discovery a few years and it sinks to the bottom in a short amount of time, it ago of the usefulness of oxalic acid has made many is what I refer to as a sinker, and will most likely need previously unusable papers amenable to the platinum to be coated and dried with a hairdryer pretty quickly printing process. Even so, I will be using only a few paafterward. On the other hand, if it stays on the top of pers that I have personally found to give superior results the water and is thus a oater, it likely has a signicant with the least amount of special treatment. amount of internal sizing, and the coating solution will Because the Pt/Pd process uses a chemical solution that need some extra time to soak in. These oater papers is acidic, it works better when used on papers that are are usually best coated then dried using a window fan at the very least pH neutral, and ideally slightly acid- with no additional heat added to speed up the drying. ic. Unfortunately, this requirement is at odds with the move toward archival papers that are buered with high pH compounds to make them less susceptible to acidic atmospheric pollutants that can cause papers to yellow Here is a list of the papers we will be using in this workwith time and exposure to these compounds. About shop: twenty years ago, the few platinum printers of the time Arches Platine this paper was specially formulated ran straight into this problem when manufacturers si- for the Pt/Pd process by custom platinum printer Martin lently changed their paper formulations and began man- Axon. It is a fairly heavy paper with good wet strength. ufacturing many of their papers with carbonate buers. It does not have to be pre-treated in oxalic acid to make Papers that had previously yielded beautiful platinum a good print, but it tends to yield better results if double prints became useless overnight. By the middle part of coated. It is heavily sized, and performs much better the 1990s, there remained only a handful of papers on if allowed to air-dry naturally under a fan rather than which one could make a decent platinum print. being forced-air dryed with a hair dryer. This paper

Paper selection

The resolution to this problem began to be circulated around the small world of platinum printers in the late 1990s. The solution was a solution: a 1% solution of oxalic acid to be precise. Printers found that by soaking a paper in a weak solution of oxalic acid, the buering compounds could be neutralized and the paper made conducive to the Pt/Pd printing process. The ability to alter the pH of the paper by neutralizing the buers with oxalic acid opens up a whole world of potential papers to use in the Pt/Pd process. In looking at new papers, I nd that in general, a hot-press watercolor paper with internal sizing to be the most amenable to this process. The internally sized papers tend to have better wet strength than a paper with just a layer of external sizing. There is nothing more frustrating than making a print only to have it fall apart while washing it after all the processing steps are complete. Unfortunately, the only way to test this with certainty is to buy a sheet and just let it soak in a tray of water for 20 minutes or so. If the corner tears o when you try to lift it out of the tray, it would not be my rst pick for a painless paper to use in this process.

yields beautiful results, yet has been plagued with manufacturing inconsistencies. Some batches of this paper appear to have large amounts of impurities that cause small black specks to appear randomlyin the nal print. As Murphys Law would indicate, these specks tend to predominate only in the most critical lighter toned areas of your image. It has a smooth surface texture and generally a warm image tone. It can be dicult to clear properly, and you will need to pay special attention to clearing this paper. COT 320 this paper is a special version of the basic Arches Platine formula that has a smoother surface and is much less prone to the notorious black speckle problem often seen with Platine. It has a smooth surface texture and a neutral to slightly warm image tone. This paper can have the same clearing issues as Platine. Fabriano Extra White Hot Press this paper is an example of one of the highly buered papers that was previously unusable in the Pt/Pd process. A ve minute soak in 1% oxalic acid solution makes this paper a wonderful addition to the platinum printing world. It has a very smooth surface, and a very nice warm and

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smooth image tone. Additionally, it has very high dimensional stability, which makes it the best paper to use if you want to advance into world of gum over platinum printing. This is a multiple pass printing process that requires you to expose the print multiple times with the same negative, thus making the lack of shrinkage in this paper a denite advantage. Whatmans Watercolor 280 # Hot Press This paper is one that requires a brief dip in a 1% oxalic acid solution and yields a beautiful warmed toned print. The only downside to this paper is that the surface texture is more pronounced than the previously mentioned papers, and therefore it may not be appropriate for all images. It clears very easily and has a wonderful hand or softness in the nished print. This paper does not to be forced-air dried with a hair dryer and performs well if allowed to dry under a cool stream of air from a fan.

Workspace requirements
Unlike a traditional darkroom environment, the Pt/ Pd printing workroom only needs to be shielded from strong UV radiation i.e. sunlight. A few incandescent bulbs will give plenty of light to work and will not fog the paper as it is being coated.

While it is certainly possible to use the sun as a source of UV light necessary for this process, a controllable articial light source is innitely easier to manage. Many people use an uorescent UV exposure units either fabricated at home or bought ready-made from some of the suppliers listed in the appendix. These units are essentially like a small tanning bed for your printing needs. They use the same UV emitting uorescent tubes as the now ubiquitous tanning salons. These units have the benet of being reasonably inexpensive, especially if Clearprint Vellum 10 pt This is one of the few vel- they are homemade. The downside to these uorescent lums that are somewhat easy to work with. Most curl units are that the light output will only stabilize after into satanic potato chips the minute they get liquid the unit has been on about 10 minutes and had a chance on them. Clearprint does not exhibit this frustrating to warm up. In order to acheive consistent exposures property to the same degree as many other vellums. using a timer, the unit must be left on during the entire It requires double coating to achieve deep blacks, and printing session. Naturally, this means that some sort of can be a little tricky to work with. The paper should be method for shielding the light from this unit from the coated with two lighter coats of solution (about 75% of rest of the work area is necessary to prevent the paper the normal volume) and dried shortly after coating with from fogging during the coating step. a warm stream of air from a hair dryer. It is helpful to tape the corners of the paper to the worksurface prior Another ne choice, and the one I prefer to work with, to coating. It is also advantageous to use piece of paper is a dedicated plateburner such as used in the graphic quite a bit larger than the print. This will allow you to arts industry. One of the easiest to use plateburners is trim of the crinkled edge of the paper between the rst manufactured by NuArc Industries of Chicago. The and second coats. NuArc 26-1K is a totally self contained unit that consists of a high intensity mercury vapor lamp, a built-in Vellum prints have a translucency and depth that can be vacuum frame and and a controller called a light intequite spectacular. Beacuse they are translucent, ambient grator. The light integrator is a measurement device that light actually penetrates through the paper and reects allows the unit to precisely measure the quantity of UV from the backing paper on which they are mounted. light that has been emitted by the unit, and once this This gives the printer the ability to alter the image tone quantity is reached, the unit automatically shuts itself simply by changing the color of the backing. They are o. This is a tremendous aid in achieving consistent exalso among the sharpest of the Pt/Pd printing papers. posures between printing sessions. Beyond that, all that is needed is a sink or counter area large enough to handle the four trays needed for processing: one developer tray and three clearing trays. You will also want to have an area dedicated to coating the paper that can be covered in order to keep stray drops of the coating solution from staining the surrounding walls or countertop. 2005 - all rights reserved

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Mixing the chemistry

Most of the chemicals can be bought already mixed. I nd it useful to mix my own chemistry both to ensure maximum freshness and to minimize the costs.

Ferric Oxalate
I generally mix up 100ml at a time. I try not to use any ferric oxalate that is older than about three months, because it will gradually convert to ferrous oxalate with time and cause minor fogging problems when printing. You can temporarily rescue an old batch of ferric oxalate with a few drops of hydrogen peroxide, but I nd this technique to be somewhat hit or miss, and not worth the eort, especially when you consider that the cost of the metal solution is several times greater than the cost of the ferric oxalate. Ferric oxalate powder 27g Oxalic acid 4g Distilled water at 120 degrees 70ml

Add the potassium oxalate to the warm water and stir until it all goes into solution. This will occur usually within a few minutes. This recipe yields about 1.3 liters of developer. The developer can be re-used. It will pick up a lot of unused ferric oxalate and metal over time and become quite discolored. I usually decant it from my storage container into the pyrex measuring cup before each printing session and discard the sediment that is on the bottom of the storage container. I keep a gallon of fresh unused developer to top-o the developer volume to make up for the developer carried o in each print and during the decanting process.

Safety
All the chemicals used in this process are harmful if ingested. So do not drink or eat in the work area. Fortunately, none of the chemicals are any more dangerous than standard photo chemistry. Just use good laboratory habits and common sense:

1. Wear gloves when you have your hands in the chemicals for any length of time. A thumb and index nger to pluck a print out of the EDTA/hypoclear clearing EDTA tetra 2g bath is okay, since it is very dilute and not toxic. The Distilled water to make 100ml potassium oxalate developer , however, should not be Heat the water and add it to the 27 g of ferric oxalate handled carelessly. My procedure with this chemical is in your clean glass mixing vessel. Add the oxalic acid to pour it into and out of trays using the pyrex beaker. and the EDTA and then the additional water to make My hands never touch the chemistry. When the print a total solution volume of 100ml. Stir vigorously for 10 is nished developing, I pour the developer out of the minutes, and then let it rest for 10 minutes. You will see tray into the pyrex container and put it back in to the the solution gradually clear to a dark olive green, and microwave for heating. By using this technique, I can a load of sediment in the bottom will settle out. Stir process the entire print without having to put on gloves, again for 5-10 minutes. You may want to heat the solu- yet I still avoid all contact with any potentially harmful tion slightly with short ten second bursts in the micro- chemical agent. A nal admonition about the potaswave. DO NOT overheat the solution. Let it sit again. sium oxalate developer is to be aware that when heated, I generally do this maybe three times, and then I give it it does give o vapors that you should avoid inhaling. one good last stir and let it sit overnight. In the morn- You can either use it at room temperature (See the colding, I heat it gently and stir one last time. Generally, all bath developer formula) or make sure your developer is of the solids will now be in solution and it will have a covered when not being used and that an exhaust fan is clear dark green color. Ferric oxalate is by far the most running when you pour the developer in the tray. This stubborn chemical you will have to mix. It just takes is just good lab practice. some time and patience. 2. Wear eye protection. If you wear glasses, that is great. If you dont, get some clear glasses to wear. You do not Potassium oxalate want to get any chemical in your eye. This is the developer you will be using. My formula is as follows: 3. Be very aware of UV radiation when using the light 330g potassium oxalate box or plate burner. Just as you would never look directly at the sun, NEVER look directly at the light source 1 liter of distilled water at 120 degrees

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of either of these pieces of equipment. Invest in a good pair of UV blocking safety glasses, and ideally, put your light box or plate burner in a closet or shield it with light tight screening. UV radiation is the main cause of cataracts, and this is the reason that the incidence of cataracts is so much higher in high altitude areas where the UV intensity from the sun is very high.

Attributes of the pt/pd negative

Platinum printing is a contact printing process. This means that you will need a negative that is the same size as the nal print you intend to make. The Pt/Pd process also requires a negative with a higher contrast (technically, a longer negative density range) than would be appropriate for a negative to be printed on silver gelatin paper. These two requirements previously left only two fairly dicult options for the photographer wanting to make Pt/Pd prints.

In-camera vs. enlarged negative

I rmly believe that the negative you have is always superior to the negative you do not have, and possession is secondary to provenance. The in-camera negative will almost always be sharper wherever you were able to get the image in focus. One of the challenges when working with ultra large format cameras is that the long focal length lenses required to cover such a huge negative have very limited depth of eld. This means that I rarely use a lens with an aperture opening larger than f/32. This in turn means that exposure times with fast The rst option was to make very large in-camera nega- lm in daylight are often 1/15 of a second or slower, tives using very large view cameras. This is still prob- and can often be as long as 10 minutes at dusk or dawn. ably the best option for certain types of subject matter. So, it can be quite true in certain circumstances (dim Static subject matter such as still lifes and landscapes light, wind blowing the foliage) that a smaller negative and some type of portraiture lend themselves to the can yield a sharper print than a larger negative. necessarily measured pace involved in using large view cameras. Many practitioners, myself included, still use With proper technique, an enlarged negative can yield these ultra-large format cameras to make negatives as a tremendously satisfying Pt/Pd print. large a 12x20 inches in size. Naturally these cameras are enormous, and using them is quite impractical in The digital negative many circumstances. The digital enlarged negative has really made the Pt/ Pd process accessible to the mainstream practitioner in The second option was to make an enlarged negative in the photographic world. Dan Burkholder was perhaps the wet darkroom using an enlarger to project an image the main pioneer in making this a reality for the rest from a small camera negative onto a piece of lm of the of us. There are two primary methods for creating the size needed for the nal print. This process was quite nal negative. One involves sending the digital image laborious and was not easily mastered by those without le to a service bureau and letting them create an ima high degree of knowledge and experience. agesetter negative on a piece of half-tone lm, and the Recently, however, a third option has become available other method involves using a inkjet printer to print the with the advent of digital imaging techniques. It is now negative on a piece of overhead transparency lm. The quite possible to use photoshop to create an image from rapid increase in the quality of inkjet printers makes the a digital le, and then subsequently output this image creation of high quality negatives on a home printer a as a negative using either a service bureau to create an reality. We will cover all of the steps in the creation of imagesetter negative, or a desktop inkjet printer to cre- digital negative later in this book. ate a negative on clear overhead transparency lm. 2005 - all rights reserved

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Steps in making the print

Paper preparation
The paper needs to be cut to size and treated with oxalic acid if necessary. I nd it generally benecial to cut the paper large enough to have approximately a 1-1/2 to 2 inch border around the image area. This will allow you to handle the wet print without being concerned with damaging the image. To treat the paper with oxalic acid, follow these steps:

Suce to say that when one measures the transmission density of the thinnest detailed shadow area of the negative and subtracts this value from the transmission density of the most dense highlight area in which you want to preserve detail, the result is DR. A good target DR for a silver gelatin negative to be printed on grade#2 paper would be about 1.1. The ideal DR for a negative intended to be printed in pure palladium would be about 1.9. So it is approximately twice as contrasty as a silver gelatin negative.

Fortunately, the contrast controls available to the platinum printer will allow a good print to be made with 1. measure out 20g of oxalic acid on your scale in a pa- a negative with quite a bit less DR than 1.9. That beper cupcake liner. ing said, as one adds more and more contrast increasing 2. Add the oxalic acid to 2 liters of warm tap water and agents to a Pt/Pd print, there is a gradual loss in print quality along with a loss of some of the unique tonal stir until dissolved. aspects that make these prints so beautiful. The beauti3. Pour the solution into a tray large enough to accom- ful long-toed highlights that go on forever qualities of modate your paper, and immerse the paper one sheet at a palladium print can be lost if too much contrast agent a time in the liquid. I always wear gloves for this step, is added to the printing process. as oxalic acid is moderately toxic. There are basically four commonly used methods for 4. For COT 320, Platine or Whatmans, just briey controlling contrast in Pt/Pd printing, and they all work leave the paper in the tray and then pull it out, allowing in basically the same way: they reduce the sensitivity of the excess water to drain back into the tray. Hang the the ferric oxalate sensitizer. But since the negative alpaper and allow it to dry thoroughly. When treating lows the shadow areas of the print to receive so much Fabriano Extra White, allow the paper to soak at least more UV light than the highlight areas of the print, the for ve minutes. A longer soak will not hurt. reduction in sensitivity has a much greater eect on the highlights than the shadows. The following table shows Contrast Control Methods you why this is the case. In this example, the contrast There are several methods available to the platinum control agent has reduced the sensitivity of the ferric printer to control the contrast of the print being made. oxalate by 4 units of light. Realize that each .3 density These contrast control methods will allow the printer to units is equal to 1 stop of light (i.e. either doubling or tailor the print contrast to perfectly match the negative halving the amount of light, depending on which direcbeing used to make the print. In this sense, it is very tion you are moving), and look at the eect of a reducsimilar to the control available to a silver-gelatin printer tion in sensitivity of the sensitizer: using variable contrast paper. As mentioned earlier, the ideal negative for Pt/Pd printing is quite a bit higher in contrast than would be typically used for silver gelatin printing. The standard way of talking about negative contrast is density range, (hereafter to be abbreviated as DR) a term that refers to the dierence in transmission density between the dense highlight areas of the negative and the less dense shadow areas. These measurements are a small part of the whole subject area called densitometry, something that is more involved than we need for the purposes of this class.

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Negative Den- Units of light sity 0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.1 256 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 Reduction in Difference Light Sensitivity 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 252 124 60 28 12 4 0 0

oxalate, the print quality begins to suer and you will notice an eect called graining that causes the metal to begin to accumulate in lumps on the nal print and gives it an unattractive salt and pepper appearance that is particularly objectionable in highlight areas of the print. Restrainer in the developer, a method that adds an oxidizer to the developer solution. For workers who must contend with a wide range of negative density ranges, this method has the disadvantage of requiring quite a few jugs of potassium oxalate developer to be kept on hand. On the other hand, this technique does not cause the same graining eect mentioned above. This method involves adding a certain number of drops of sodium dichromate to a given volume of developer. Below is a table of how the developer would be mixed:
Developer Number Drops of 50% Sodi- Negative DR um dichromate per 200ml of developer 0 1 2 4 8 16 32 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.4 1.3

Notice how the 1.5 negative density now results in the same print density that previously occurred at the 1.8 density part of the negative. So now the range of negative densities that can be represented by print tone has been reduced from 1.8 to 1.5! This is a very brief, and really not that important an illustration of the what is occurring when we adjust our process for contrast. The four commonly used methods for contrast control are: Hydrogen peroxide drops added to the sensitizer mix. This method does work, but it is somewhat inexact because hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is in an unstable state, and will gradually convert to just water (H2O) over time. So when you use this method, you really do not know what the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide really is at a given point in time. It can be useful for salvaging some older ferric oxalate that has begun to fog with age, however. Adding a few drops of this powerful oxidizer will convert the ferrous oxalate back to ferric and allow you to nish using a bottle of the sensitizer. Ferric Oxalate #2 - a separate bottle of ferric oxalate that has had the addition of an oxidizer called potassium chlorate added to it. With this method, the printer can substitute drops of the doctored ferric oxalate for drops of the pure ferric oxalate, and thus control the contrast in very ne increments. The main disadvantage of this technique is that once you get beyond a ratio of about 4:1 of pure ferric oxalate vs doctored ferric

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Na2 (sodium chloroplatinite), which involves adding minute quantities of sodium chloroplatinate to the solution. This form of platinum metal is tetravalent, and consumes twice as much ferric oxalate during the develop process as the palladium solution, and results in a net increase in print contrast. The realization by some workers a few years ago that very dilute mixtures of this metal salt could be prepared and added to the sensitizer mix allowed a very ne degree of control over print contrast to be achieved. This metal salt is commonly available at a solution strength of 20%. But it can be diluted with distilled water to smaller, more useful solution strengths. Take a 25 ml bottle, and leave 15mls in it at 20%, dilute the removed 10ml with 10ml of distilled water, and then set aside 10mls of this new dilution in its own bottle (10%

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solution strength). Dilute the remaining 10mls with another 10mls of distilled water, again setting aside 10mls in its own bottle (a 5% solution strength). Dilute the remaining 10mls with yet another 10mls of water, and set aside another 10mls (2.5% solution strength). Finally add 10mls of water to the remainder for a 1.25% solution. Clearly label all of these bottles. The pros of this method are that it is quick and eective, and causes no print graining. The downside is that it only works with pure palladium prints, since the addition of any platinum metal to the sensitizer mix will cause the Na2 to convert to its more common bivalent form. It also will cause a considerable cooling of image tone if used in any quantity. This makes getting matching print tones on a body of work from in-camera negatives with varying negative density ranges quite dicult. In this workshop, I will be illustrating the Na2 method and the oxidizer in the developer method. Since we will be using primarily digital negatives that have the very nice quality of all having the exact same density range, it makes any tradeos in the methods very minimal (Thank you Photoshop!). While it is possible to create negatives that require no contrast control agent at all, most workers nd it benecial to have some contrast agent present in their process to help minimize the effects of any fogging caused by aging ferric oxalate. makes this observation one that should be investigated on your own, but not necessarily relied upon for your own work. If you are adding Na2 contrast control agent to your sensitizer, add that now. (Note: will not work if any platinum metal is in your mix!) Finally, swirl the two solutions together in the shot glass, and make sure they are thoroughly mixed.

Coating the paper

Put your paper on a piece of at newsprint and tape the paper down if necessary to hold it at. Many people purchase a sheet of thick plate glass to use as a coating surface. If you want a clean edge to your coat, mask o the area to be coated with 3M Safe Release Extra Sensitive surface painters masking tape. Prepare your Richeson brush by thoroughly immersing it in a beaker of distilled water, then give the brush 4 quick shakes in each direction to remove excess water from the brush. Be careful not to let fall any stray drops of water onto the paper. If you do get a drop on the paper, use another sheet to coat and let the damaged sheet dry thoroughly.

In one smooth motion, pour an even bead of the solution along the left edge of the paper being coated. It takes a little practice to cleanly empty the shot glass of all its solution without leaving a puddle or having any Mixing the sensitizer and metal left over in the shot glass. Quickly pass your brush from In your shot glass, mix equal amounts of ferric oxalate left to right returning to the initial bead of solution at and platinum and palladium metal solution. If you are the beginning of each pass. Then make passes of the using droppers, mix 12 drops of ferric oxalate with 12 brush in a top to bottom motion at right angles to your drops of palladium. If you want to make a Pt/Pd print, rst brushing pass. Next go from left to right, and then substitute drops of platinum solution for palladium so- from bottom to top, always keeping the brush in molution. For example, you could use 10 drops palladium, tion. The trick to this technique is to hurry slowly. Do 2 drops of platinum combined with 12 drops of fer- not linger, but do not get wild and sloppy either. I will ric oxalate. Using platinum in quantities greater than show you how this is done, and it is much easier to dem50/50 (e.g. 6 drops each of platinum and palladium for onstrate than to describe. Continue the motion of the the previous example) is not recommended. brush until the coat is smooth and even, and there are no puddles of liquid beingmoved about by the brush. The ratio of platinum to palladium will have an eect on the nal image color. The more platinum that is add- Drying the paper ed, the colder the tone will be in the nal image. ConThe drying method to be used is paper dependent. I versely, the more palladium that is present in the mix, nd that papers such as COT 320, Whatmans, and the warmer the tone. Some workers nd that adding Arches Platine, which have heavy internal sizing, are a small amount of platinum helps produce a smoother best dried under a cool fan and allowed to dry without image gradation. Like so many things involved in Pt/ any heat. This gives the solution time to absorb deeply Pd printing, other variables in each individuals process into the paper bers. On the other hand, papers such as

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Fabriano Extra White and Clearprint Vellum are best dried using a blow dryer set to a medium heat setting. These papers are thirstier and tend to absorb the sensitizer too deeply if it is allowed to sit too long before the water has evaporated from the solution. If the paper needs to be double coated, you will simply repeat the coating and drying sequence. I will simultaneously pour the developer with one hand and rock the tray with the other. This can become quite a feat when working with a 24x28 inch tray. That is one reason it is best to start with prints that are 8x10 or smaller.

The temperature of the developer is another creative variable that can be used in the printing process. The Exposing the paper potassium oxalate developer we will be using can be The coated and dried paper will now be exposed with heated up to 160 degrees in the microwave oven. As the chosen UV light source. In our workshop, we will the developer temperature increases, the warmth of the use either a plateburner or a UV light box. I will show print tone increases and the print contrast decreases. you how to calibrate the light source and nd the cor- If I am making a pure palladium print that I want to rect time for your exposure in the class. This is much have a very warm image tone, I will often heat the demore simple to demonstrate than to discuss, and you veloper to 160 degrees in the microwave. Some papers will be able to go back to your own work environment cannot stand developer temperatures this hot, and the internal sizing of the paper becomes destroyed and a and calibrate your own process after this workshop. blotchy print will result. The maximum temperature for a given paper will have to be determined by trial and In either case, you need to put your negative on the dried error, and is normally discovered by going too far on a paper, with the emulsion side of the negative against the beautiful print that will then have to be redone. Such is coated surface of the paper you have just coated. Posithe charm of this process. tion the negative paper sandwich in the printing frame of the plate maker and lower the glass cover, or put it As a starting point, do not exceed about 150 degrees in the contact printing and close the back. Expose the with Platine, 160 degrees with COT320 and Clearprint paper with the UV light source for the appropriate time Vellum or 165 degrees with the Whatmans. I generally using either a watch or the built in light measurement use the Fabriano Extra White only for gumover work unit in the platemaker. where all the image tone will be created by the gum coats, and I rarely use developer hotter than 100 degrees Development of the print with this paper. After the print has been exposed, remove the negative and paper from the contact printing frame or the vacuum frame of the plateburner. Place the negative in a safe protected envelope, and take the time now to write down the specic coating and exposure information you have just used on the print border or back. I cannot emphasize enough the need to develop this habit early in your Pt/Pd printing education. You will never remember precisely the exact amounts of metal and sensitizer, exposure time, and developer temperature if you do not write it down on the print before you get it wet with developer. Put the print face up in the developer tray, and quickly pour the developer solution onto the print. The developer must come in contact with the entire print within a second or two to avoid the appearance of tidal lines on the print. As you begin to make larger prints, the technique necessary to quickly immerse the entire print in developer becomes somewhat tricky. For large prints, After the print is allowed to develop for about 3 minutes or so, the used developer is poured back into your pyrex beaker.

Clearing of the print

The rest of the printing process involves getting rid of the unexposed ferric oxalate from the bers of the paper. Failure to completely remove the ferric oxalate will result in a print that will eventually turn brown over time. Naturally this is not a desirable result. I nd it benecial to ll the developing tray with warm tap water and allow the print to soak for about ve minutes before beginning the chemical clearing steps. You will see the water turn yellow with the unused ferric oxalate that is coming out of the paper bers. Next, place the print in the rst clearing bath. This is normally an acidic clearing bath of either citric acid at

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2-3% solution strength (20-30g/liter of water), or a 1% solution of muriatic acid. I do not recommend muriatic acid for beginners because it is quite noxious and will corrode any metal in sight if it is not properly disposed of. Some papers (none of which we will be using in this workshop) require muriatic to be properly cleared. Place the print in the next two clearing baths, keeping the print in each bath for ve minutes. Too much time in the baths can begin to bleach the print, so it is important to use a timer and not be too sloppy with these steps. I recommend using Kodak hypoclear mixed to normal working strength with the addition of 1 heaping tablespoon of EDTA tetrasodium per liter of clearing solution. Keep an eye on the third clearing bath, and the moment you notice that it is getting even slightly yellow, promote this bath to the second bath, discard the second bath and mix a fresh third clearing bath. I generally replace the rst clearing bath after ever y four prints or so. After the third bath, carefully inspect the print to see if there are any residual ferric oxalate stains in the maskedo border areas or the highlight areas of the prints. If you notice that there seems to be some residual stain, mix a fresh double strength bath of hot hypoclear and EDTA and give it an additional ve minute clearing bath. ment than to try to match the tone exactly on the rst pass. You will also notice that with spotting that less is certainly more. Often you can just put a small dab of tone in the middle of a white spot, and it disappears to the eye from a normal viewing distance. Dark spots due to the black speckle paper problem are more dicult to handle, but can often be etched out with a very sharp X-acto knife. You will need a 10X loupe and a steady hand to do this eectively. Downing six shots of espresso before starting the etching process is denitly not a good idea. The secret is to use the very tip of the blade to gently remove small ecks of black platinum metal until the tone matches the surrounding areas. I will demonstrate both spotting and etching techniques in the workshop. Neither is particularly easy, but with enough practice on discarded prints, one can become reasonably procient.

After the print has been completely nished and is a bona de piece of art, you may want to either wax the print with Gamblin cold wax medium, or soak the print briey in a Liquitex Gloss medium diluted 1:8 with distilled water. Both techniques will increase the shadow contrast slightly and give a just-perceptible pop to the image. Waxing is the most dicult of the two techniques and is more prone to disaster, which is not someAfter the print is completely cleared, wash the print in thing that most people want to deal with at the last step running water for 10 to 20 minutes to remove any reof a print process. I will demonstrate waxing technique sidual clearing agent from the paper bers. with the understanding that you should experiment with this carefully on a few discarded prints before Drying committing to waxing a 20x24 print from a negative Hang the print from some clothespins on a drying line that has just been burned up in a re, along with the until it is just barely damp. Then place the print face-up computer that contained the image le. on a drying rack and allow the print to dry naturally. As mentioned earlier, a platinum print has no emulsion Since there is no emulsion layer in a Pt/Pd print, the layer, so it will not have the tendency to curl when the print will dry at and will need only a brief visit to a dry print is dried. Usually all that is required is a very brief mount press to atten the print for good. visit to a drymount press set at 150 degrees or so for a few minutes, and the print will be at forever. This Spotting, etching, and waxing makes corner mounting the prints under a hinged mat Since the Pt/Pd print is made on watercolor paper, wa- the preferred method for mounting the print, as optercolor pigments can be used to spot out white imper- posed to the need to use dry mount tissue when mountfections in the print that are due to dust spots on the ing traditional silver gelatin prints. negative. The trick to doing this is to start out light, and gradually work your way to the spots in the darker areas. I nd that it is better to gradually build up tone throught the application of several layers of lighter pig-

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Resources
General Information
Alt-photo mail list commentary, hints, ames http://www.usask.ca/lists/alt-photo-process/about.htm Photo.net alternative photography message board http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1564 Digital negatives information ala Burkholder http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/ book_info_main_page1.htm Galleries and short articles on alt-processes gum, bromoil, Pt/Pd, van dyke, the works http://www.alternativephotography.com/

Books
Platinum and Palladium Printing Dick Arentz 2nd Edition is in now out. This is really the modern bible of platinum printing - exhaustive, thorough, somewhat technical description of the process as it is being practiced today - from soup to nuts. The New Platinum Print Sullivan and Weese This book is available through Bostick and Sullivan, and is a good, somewhat less technical treatment of the process. The coverage of the printing out process called Ziatype is particularly good in this book. Keepers of Light - William Crawford This book is a classsic compendium of many of the socalled alternative processes. Not especially thorough or modern in its treatment of platinum printing, it is nonetheless a classic treatise, although a bit dated now. Coming into Focus - John Barnier et al This book is another tour-de-force of the the alternative process world. Covers everything from salt print to albumen to tri-color gum. Good articles on each process written by experts in that particular discipline. Alternative Photographic Techniques - Christopher James Another compendium of alternative techniques. The information is comprehensive, if not always 100% correct. James is a little more of a shoot from the hip practitioner compared to some of the more - well, anal - authors that tend to congregate in the platinum printing world. Nice refreshing approach.

General photo information, articles on many alternative processes

http://www.unblinkingeye.com/

Supplies

Most alternative processes are supported by the friendly folks at B & S http://www.bostick-sullivan.com/ The Photographers Formulary have almost any chemical you might need, and give great workshops in beautiful Montana http://www.photoformulary.com Mike is a great source for chemicals and his service and prices are great! http://www.artcraftchemicals.com/ Bulk precious metals - palladium chloride, platinum chloride, etc: http://www.engelhard-clal.com/index.html

Pt/Pd photographers websites

http://www.kerik.com/ http://www.dickarentz.com/ http://www.carlweese.com/ http://www.jkschreiber.com/ http://www.davidmichaelkennedy.com/ http://www.sallopes.com/ 2005 - all rights reserved

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Platinum Palladium Recipes

Ferric Oxalate 27 g ferric oxalate powder 4 g oxalic acid 70ml distilled water at 120 degrees 2g EDTA tetrasodium

and then hang the print to dry. One corner of the print should hang slightly lower so that any excess will drip o without leaving a line on the bottom of your print.

distilled water to make 100ml

Stir, heat, stir, wait, stir, stir, wait.... Potassium Oxalate Developer 330g potassium oxalate Stir until dissolved Lithium Palladium 6.2g lithium chloride 92ml distilled water 8.3g palladium chloride Stir until dissolved. Filter through high grade lter paper before putting in bottle. Careful with this solution, as it stains permanently! Makes 100ml. Citric Acid Clearing Bath #1 dissolve 3 heaping tablespoons of citric acid in 3 liters of water EDTA di-sodium Clearing Bath #1 dissolve 3 tablespoons EDTA di-sodium in 3 liters of water HypoClear + EDTA Clearing Bath #2 & #3 Mix hypoclear 1:4 from stock solution. Add 3 tablespoons of EDTA tetrasodium. Stir until dissolved. Discard bath #2 and promote bath#3 to bath #2 whenever you notice any coloration in bath #3. Bath #3 should always be clear! Oxalic Acid pre-soak for paper Add 10-15g of oxalic per liter of water. Dip or soak paper as needed then hang to dry. Liquitex Print Enhancer Add 100ml of Liquitex Gloss Medium to 800ml of distilled water. Stir thoroughly to mix and pour into a at bottomed tray. Pass the print through the mix 1000ml distilled water at 120 degrees

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