Image of the Week: Deer Skull, Citronelle, Alabama, Palladium Print

In the past few weeks, I've received several questions about my digital negative and palladium printing process, so this week I'm going to briefly discuss my methods.

There are many ways to skin the digital negative cat: both Dan Burkholder and Ron Reeder have written very good books on the subject, though the information in each ages quickly (more about that below). Mark Nelson has his Precision Digital Negative system. There's a photographer here in Vermont that I just met who swears by the PDN system, and judging from his work, it's working well for him. If I can free up some time this winter, I might try PDN myself.

The thing with all of the tutorials and advice you'll find online is that bits of it are rendered obsolete anytime a new printer or inkset comes out. A large part of the "cannon" of making digital negatives was based on Epson printers of 8-10 years ago, so these hybrid alt-process guys had to come up with creative ways of getting those inks to smoothly stick to transparency material in color combinations that would most effectively block UV. The Epson software was woefully underpowered for the job, so they resorted to exotic RIP software (such as Quadtone RIP) to carefully control the amounts of ink laid down on a print. The result is that you ended up spending hours fiddling with QTR ink curves and piles of printed step tablets trying to tweak the process.

You'll find instructions that are just not correct for modern printers or bits of advice that seem fundamental but have no valid bearing on the result, such as "I only ever use matte black for making digital negatives", only to find out later that that person does so because he prints on matte papers and doesn't want to waste ink switching back and forth. In my experience (and that's important qualifier with this kind of work) with Epson's modern Ultrachrome inks, matte or glossy black makes no difference in the output (though if you have hard evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it.)

My method cobbles together bits from many sources: some of Reeder's advice, some of Dick Arentz' (from his book Platinum and Palladium Printing -- he doesn't tackle digital negs, just the wet bits), and I filled in the spaces from a multitude of others online who have shared their methods. I started off with the ChartThrob method, printed a few step tablets, and let the ChartThrob scripts generate correction curves automatically. These were close, but not great. So I started printing the ChartThrob step tablets alongside real photos with broad spans of continuous tones and just used my eye to manually create correction curves in Photoshop. I use Epson's Advanced Black and White option in the printer driver to print onto Pictorico OHP film. I print Palladium with a kit obtained from Bostick and Sullivan onto Arches Platine paper, also purchased from B&S. I double-coat the paper at a relative humidity of 50-65%, making sure I let the paper equalize to that humidity before coating. The RH makes a huge difference in your prints, let me tell you. I spent a couple of weeks chasing that problem. Here in Vermont, I use a humidifier in my darkroom to boost the moisture levels from ~20% in the wintertime to the required 50-65%. But don't let it go too high -- the humidity has a profound effect on contrast.

I expose the paper with the digital negative sandwiched on top of the coated paper inside a contact printing frame I constructed underneath an array of 8 black light fluorescent bulbs, all built using materials purchased from my local "Lowe's" store. My exposure time is about 6-8 minutes. I develop the print in warm Potassium Oxalate, and clear it in Kodak Hypo-Clearing Agent followed by several water-soaking baths.

Consistency in your work ethic is critical. You change one variable -- the paper type, the RH, the transparency film, the developer, etc -- and everything falls apart.

I could go on for hours about this. There are so many disparate pieces to this puzzle that all have to come together in the end to get a successful product, it's a little overwhelming. When I first started experimenting with this process, I thought it would be easy: I was always a good worker in my Organic Chemistry classes at college, I can follow directions, I'm a dedicated worker -- how hard could it be? Well, it's another Rabbit Hole, that's for sure. How far you go down that hole is up to you. :-)

This is the way I do it, and so far it's working for me. If you have suggestions or feel that something I've shared here is incorrect, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Technical Data

I photographed Deer Skull, Citronelle, Alabama, Palladium Print with a Nikon D200 DSLR and an Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8 AF-D lens. The exposure was approximately 30 seconds at ƒ/8, ISO 100. I processed the image in Nikon Capture NX2 and Adobe Photoshop, and output a digital negative onto Pictorico OHP transparency film. I then contact printed the negative in Palladium on double-coated Arches Platine watercolor paper, developed it in warm Potassium Oxalate, and cleared the print in Kodak HypoClearing Agent and several water soak baths.

Deer Skull, Citronelle, Alabama, Palladium Print. Click on image to view larger.

Purchase a Fine Art Photographic Print

Deer Skull, Citronelle, Alabama, Palladium Print was available as an 6"x7" Palladium print. It had already been sold at the time this article was published. I will be releasing a full portfolio of Limited Edition Palladium Prints of selected images soon. Please sign up for my newsletter to be notified of upcoming portfolios and exhibitions.

Share This Page

Other Images of the Week