I am here in my Tucson studio and have been working on salt printing. A few things come to mind.
First…I tried printing a landscape photograph of the Badlands in South Dakota which I took this past summer …a 35mm film captured with the Olympus OM-2sp. I happen to enjoy the photo. But I also have been showing it around and others are not overly crazy about it. So it has me wondering if I should even pursue more landscape photography using the salt printing process. I envisioned having a small zine of landscapes done in that manner. Will ponder on. Below is the photo.
The second thing that has come to me has been in answering a question I have had regarding why some images come out more sepia than others. I already knew that the longer a photo ‘rests’ after the final rinse, and with the addition of putting a coating on after it has dried, it turns darker in that final process. But I think it also has to do with when I prepare the paper with sodium or silver nitrate, if I force dry the paper by using a hair dryer or smaller space heater, than it comes out sepia it appears. If I just let the paper dry naturally, the sepia isn’t as strong. The image below has a sepia tinge to it, as I took a shot of this with my iPhone, so that is another thing entirely as in person, it is more black. Go figure. Also, the image below was not under the UV lights as long as I would normally as I wanted the person to come thru a bit more and not be as dark. So that too causes sepia. Too little time under UV lights. Lots to learn….each image has to be taken individually and understood.
