This is a portrait of my friend Meg taken originally shot with a 4x5 camera on Ilford Delta 100 film. This is a great film for large format work in general, but especially so if you are planing on scanning your film. It has a great latitude in exposure, development and in scanning, has great resolution and a tight grain pattern that make it great for enlarging or large format inkjet prints.
4x5in negative
The exposure was made, the film developed normally in the dark room using trays, and allowed to dry. The negative was scanned using a 4x5 drum scanner at a high resolution, giving me a nice big file to play around with. At the time the final print was made on an Epson 4880 on a basic luster inkjet paper. The results were good.
13x19 inket print
Fast forward a few months and I began to experiment with the outstanding platinum/palladium process. The process lends itself quite naturally to printing portraits, as it has some really great visual qualities. Pt/Pd has a very large dynamic range, and has a very soft, almost velvety low contrast quality. The color can be varied by changing the mixture ratio of platinum vs palladium, ranging from a cool, metallic look from all platinum to a nice warm, rich tone with all palladium. Pt/Pd prints are also some of the most permanent object on earth, with the two elements being very stable over long periods of time.
4x5 in Platinum/Palladium print on marker paper
A Pt/Pd mixture is carefully (this stuff is expensive!) brush coated on to a piece of paper, in this case a beautiful, semi translucent marker paper, allowed to dry and then humidified. A negative is placed on the coated paper and put inside of a contact printing frame. I use a Bostick and Sullivan model which is built very well and works wonderfully, and I know it will be around for many years to come. Bostick and Sullivan are also a wonderful source for ingredients and information The contact frame is placed inside of an exposure box and exposed to UV light. Set your timer, remove the negative from the print and develop the print normally. Viola.
This platinum/palladium portrait of my friend Meg is one my favorite prints that I have ever made. The marker paper feels lovely in your hands, and the semi-translucent quality is awesome, and gives some creative leeway for mounting and framing. The image itself has a gorgeous color, like a subtle sepia tone, is tack sharp (thanks to the contact print) and has a delicious and subtle low-contrast tonal range that works excellent with the desired mood of the photo. I love the brush strokes that indicate this is a hand made object, some people hate this look, to each his own, the strokes can easily be covered up when using a matte.
Lastly, for comparisons sake is a digital file taken from my Nikon D80 while trying to determine the correct exposure and metering for the large format camera.
RAW file from Nikon D80
So which is the best? Again, there is no right answer. My personal preference is for the Platinum/Palladium print. Its visual qualities are outstanding to me, and best mimic the mood that I was trying to create with this portrait. It does have it's downsides though, you are limited in the various sizes that you can print in, if the negative is 4x5, you're stuck with at that size... sorta. In further posts I'll be talking about creating digital negatives that allow you to have much more flexibility in working with hand-coated processes.
The Platinum/Palladium printing process also has a prestigious history. An examination of the history of the process is a veritable who's-who of important fine art portrait photography.
Don't miss: Platinotype, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston.
Dan Burkholder is a wonderful contemporary photographer and platinum printer.
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