Frequently Asked Questions

• You mention warm-tone paper, what does warm-tone mean?
• The whiteness of the paper varies and is referred to as tone. Warm tones are more red/orange, and cold tones are closer to blue. The images below were printed using very similar exposures on two different papers. The image on the left was printed on a Kodak paper with a neutral to cool toned white. The image on the right was printed on Foma warm tone paper. Notice how the whites are different. The Foma paper is warm toned and the whites are creamier. The neutral to cool Kodak paper has a colder look. You can click on either for a bigger version.

Cool whites

Warm whites

Cool w/ Selenium

Warm w/ Selenium
• Ok, I see the difference, but what about this selenium toner?
• The printed image can be treated with a selenium toner. Selenium reacts with the silver that forms the image creating a silver-selenium complex. The end result is that the silver-selenium complex is impervious to oxidation meaning the tones will not change for at least 100 years. Untreated prints can oxidize, so with time the dark tones may become lighter.
• The second change that will occur after treatment with selenium toner is slight change in color. The formerly neutral grays become slightly darker and purple. The extent to which the color changes can be controlled by changing the dilution of the toning bath, but the protective benefit from toning remains constant.
• These images of a pulley are scanned 6x9 prints on Kodak and Foma papers (as shown above) after being treated with a dilute selenium toning bath. The change in color is on the mild end of the spectrum. I didn't attempt to digitally remaster these images because my monitor is probably calibrated differently than your monitor. These are unedited scans of actual 6x9 prints using a flat bed scanner. In real life the differences may be more pronounced, but I decided to show unedited scans as the fairest comparison.
• What is meant by 'silver gelatin'?
• Traditional black and white prints are made of paper and a photographic emulsion. The emulsion is mostly gelatin, like jello, with light-reactive silver particles dispersed within it. The silver reacts with light and is then treated with chemicals (and maybe toners) during processing to form the image inside this thin gelatin layer on the surface of the paper.
• The finished print has real depth to it because the toned silver particles are inside the layer of gelatin not just at the surface. If you hold a nice glossy silver gelatin print up to a strong light you can literally see the silver reflecting light.
• What is that black border around the edge of your images?
• It depends which images you mean. Except for the scanned prints on this page, all of the digital images on my site are scanned negatives. The negative scanner records the whole image on the film and a little extra around the edges of the image. The black border shows the true edge of the image.
• Similarly, my printed images include a black border. This also shows the edge of the image. Notice how for different prints the border may vary slightly: click the pulley images above to see. I do this to show that I did my cropping before I took the picture. The image I intended to take fills the entire frame. Sometimes when taking a picture I accidentally include something that should not be in the finished image. The easy fix is to crop it out (zoom in until the extra piece is off the page). See the example below. My finished prints are almost exclusively photos that were entirely intentional, and I print the entire frame, including a thin border at the edge of the image, to prove it.
• Why are silver gelatin prints more expensive than 'regular' prints?
• The short answer is time, but here are some specific reasons to clarify.
• A 'regular' print is not very different from printing a photo on your home printer. The printer and paper are usually more expensive than what you would normally use at home, but ink is applied to the surface of the paper by a machine and allowed to dry. Done. That's it. If you want more copies, just click the box in the print dialog to indicate the number of copies you want and presto you have 10,20, or 100 replicates of the same image. Any changes to the image are made from the comfort of the computer operator's chair and will be reflected in every subsequent print.
• A traditionally crafted black and white photograph requires a different process. The image on the film negative is projected onto a piece of photo paper. The paper is then developed, fixed, and washed in a series of chemical baths. To tone the print an addition series are baths are required. Areas of the print can be selectively lightened or darkened using 'dodging' and 'burning' which means blocking the light from hitting the photo paper or adding extra exposure by hand. Simply exposing the paper may take five minutes for each print and the chemical processing of each print takes about an hour.
• Because there are so many steps involved in making a single print and that each step is done by hand, there is no such thing as an exact replicate of any print even if it was my intention. Unlike a digitally printed image which can be 'dodged' and 'burned', or otherwise manipulated once, these steps must be done as part of the process of creating each print. The print itself is a handcrafted piece of art.
• Each of my finished original 100% hand-crafted silver gelatin prints are the culmination of a series of expertly executed deliberate steps to achieve the finished image I had in mind. It takes much longer to make a traditional print and there is no 'undo' button if I make a mistake. The prints have depth and will last 100 years or more.