Wilting Tulip

By Omar Ozenir

http://geldurkal.blogspot.co.uk/

Regular visitors will probably be surprised at this picture. Indeed, it is extremely rare that I make a close-up photo of a flower; “ too tacky” says a voice in my head. Nevertheless, this specimen was at home and over the course of several days I watched it grow, bloom, wither and die…so why not photograph it? The tulip was at its most photogenic towards the end of its life, with one petal opened up, beckoning the viewer to enter. The light was diffuse daylight from a balcony door.

The photo is actually not black and white as such, but the light tones are yellowish as can be seen in the final pictures below. I prefer a greyscale scan for the main photo, because of problems I encounter with colour scans and the variability of colours on different monitors. Even getting the greys right can be difficult!

Some technicalities for the interested (rather long…you’ve been warned!):

Over the last few months I’ve rediscovered the joys of selenium toning, mostly because I found that it can transform Ilford’s standard Multigrade fibre paper. Having used Agfa’s Multicontrast Classic and Forte’s Polywarmtone, both FB, for a long time, I always thought the tonal values of Ilford’s product lacked the kind of separation I was getting with those wonderful but unfortunately dead papers.

However, putting Ilford MGIV through Kodak Rapid Selenium Toner, diluted 1+9, for 5-7 minutes completely changes the picture. Now I was finally getting the kind of blacks and tonal separation I was after. In this photo I took the toning one step further by split toning in both sepia and selenium. But let’s not rush and have a look at the negative first:

Today, instead of showing a straight print, let me try to read the negative. I had placed a large piece of black cardboard behind the flower, rather clumsily it turned out. For a start, the cardboard edge appears in the lower left corner…bummer. More importantly, the light isn’t distributed evenly over the background: the left side of the neg is lighter than the right side, i.e. when the left side of the print is black, there’s a good chance that the right side will be a dark shade of grey.

That’s eventually how things turned out in a print exposed for the flower petals. What I wanted, however, was a completely black background. I made three test strips on fibre based Ilford Multigrade, using the grade 3 filter on my Meopta Meograde diffuser head. After quickly drying them in the microwave I decided on a base exposure of 14 seconds.

From top to bottom: 10, 14, 20 seconds

With another set of test strips (not shown here), I decided that the background needed at least another 14 seconds at grade 5* in order to take it to pure black.

Now, the critical question is this: how do I make the background completely black without affecting the flower? The major problem less experienced darkroom enthusiasts face is probably that they leave artifacts after complex dodging and burning. For example, if I would cut a mask like this,

and use it to burn-in the background for the required 14 seconds by masking the flower, how would that turn out? I’m sure there are people out there who can manage just that without leaving any sign of the masking, but I’m not one of them. It’s really not that easy. And don’t forget that it’s not only the petals but also the stem that has to look natural in the final print.

One of my tactics for complex dodging and burning-in is to split them into smaller, more manageable pieces. That way, the human “errors” in every move become less perceptible. In this photograph, I divided the extra exposures into three separate steps. First, by holding the mask shown above very close to the paper I dodged the flower and leaf at the bottom left for 7 seconds.

I hear you say that the mask placed flat on the leaf surely must leave a mark. If I had left the mask on the leaf for the whole 7 seconds, then yes, there would’ve been an obvious mark. But what I did was, I gave those 7 seconds as 7 x 1 second, and in each second I very slightly and randomly changed the position of the mask: again, dividing the problem into smaller parts. This method leaves no telltale sign of dodging.

Moving on, by holding another, less precise cut mask a bit higher up, I gave the right side of the photo further 7 seconds,

and with a similar mask held at a similar height I gave the left side of the photo the required additional 7 seconds.

These masks were never held stationary, but were constantly moved around slightly. Also, you'll realise that at the top of the photo the exposures overlap. This is not a problem though, as this area is black anyway.

Finally, to absolutely guarantee that the background is pitch black, I slowly moved a cut-out hole on cardboard around the edges.

Now we’ve arrived at the interesting part (it's already been very interesting to me! - Ed). Since I wanted the petals to have a yellowish hue I gave the print a light sepia tone. What follows is rather important because how we proceed can yield dramatically different results.

First, I’d like to give a very brief summary of sepia toning for the novice reader - are there any? (yeah, me, haha! No more "eds" from now on - Ed). I use a two bath sepia toner from Fotospeed. The first bath is called bleach and the second bath is the actual toner. Basically, the well washed print is first immersed in the bleach, where the image is gradually bleached back. Given enough time, it will disappear almost completely. After a thorough intermediate wash the print is transferred to the toner bath, where the image reappears, this time with the sepia tones. Depending on how we’ve prepared the toner bath, the tone can vary between bright yellow and dark brown. For this photo, I mixed the chemicals for a yellow tone.

The twist with toning is how we use the bleach. For example, I don’t like a full sepia tone. I’d rather have only the light values pick up some yellow and leave the blacks unaffected. To get this effect, you’ll have to pull the print before the bleach starts to act on the darker tones. But if you dilute the bleach with water according to the instructions at a 1:3 ratio (that’s one part bleach to three parts water), you’ll be surprised what happens: the image starts to disappear the very instant the print touches the bleach! In other words, you lose all control; you just can’t be quick enough to remove the print at a desired bleach point.

To regain some control at this stage I experimented with different dilutions and decided that 1:49 was just right for me! At such a high dilution ratio even after 90 seconds I can’t see any visible bleaching but once the print is transferred to the toner (after thorough washing) the light greys turn a slight yellow…just as I wanted.

After sepia toning the print as described above, I put it through Kodak Rapid Selenium toner, at a 1:9 dilution ratio, for about 6 minutes.

After selenium the blacks turn so deep, this definitely has to be tried and experienced first hand. The toned print is visibly livelier than an untoned version:

* check out the sentence in bold in my previous post that explains why.