Category: film

What is Lith

Posted on Posted in film, labnotes, the Lab

making silver blush

Lith is an altered darkroom procedure. Lith printing is done by using a high contrast, very active, easily exhausted developer, originally formulated to process film, as a paper developer. At one time (’60-’72) Kodak made a lith paper for use in confirming the dot and size of litho film – the stuff used for halftone lithography – notice the name.

As photography moved from the commercial to the fine art as a means of income; as it became a studio practice in colleges, artists took on prior products and processes in the practice of an artist. They retrieved, re-purposed commercial conceits for esthetic effect.

Counter Culture

Kodalith paper and  developer satisfied the need an urge for a printer affect for a printmaking aesthetic. It produces a high contrast image that is warm tone, having an altered tone response that is counter to the Adams-Westen F.64 look and feel.

Warm is old timey… sepia suggests authentic & old. Making an image that holds that aura while achieving an altered printed tone range seemed new. This satisfied counterculture drive for alternative ways of seeing portraying and subverting standardized commercial response

What Does Lith

lithNotes.001
making silver blush

Look Like

This is where the roads part. One trail leads to glorious sunburst, as the other emphasizes modest color shift with abrupt tone contrasts. Kodalith paper was warm tone that would turn yellow if the developing time was extended. This extended development was usually to overcome too little exposure, and/or exhausted developer.

The rows in the graphic are:

  1. papers no longer in production.. Brovira, Cykora, Kodalith paper
  2. current (2017) warmtone papers: Ilford MG warmtone / Foma Fomatone / Slavich Bromoportrait
  3. current (2017) coldtone papers: Slavich, Foma Fomabrom, Adox Lupex (contact chloride paper)

What Does It Solve

To weekend zoners it is novelty – a reason to “do it in the dark,” or “keep film alive.” These are the red-light workers acting on such advice as: Lith printing can breathe a whole new life into an everyday image — 

Lith printing was revived and is championed by several onliners and book pushers. This monetizable interest comes from the weekenders reaching retirement age; discovering need for awakening tired original negatives, they proceeded to alter the soup of their print.

These photographers are the same ones disparaging digital photographers’ making push-button plugin pictures. Neither technology makes meaningful, nor meaningless images. The lack of visual understanding is the shortcoming each actor is unaware of in their struggle to realize meaning.

I use lith to enrich the shades of grey available with current papers. Altering the underlying tonal quality providing a small variation of skadesics, thereby increasing the  visible shades without reducing contrast. Simple: I get bigger mid tones.

What Do I Need

Just the standard darkroom conditions. I’ve posted specifics in the following referenced links (this site). Use a paper such as Foma Fomatone & Moersch Lith Developer. You must use a stop bath — water bath will just frustrate you with likely staining. My standard fixer is Ilford Hypam 1+9.

easy bake starting point:

  • 120 neg in Beseler 45MCRX
  • lens wide open
  • 16 second exposure
  • Moersch Lith: 30,30,800 for 7 minutes development
  • when it looks good ::: snatch into citric stop bath (NO INDICATOR DYE)
  • flip print over, pull from stop, quickly into fixer
  • fix for standard (read paper instructions) time (5-8 minutes)
  • wash

 

References

blog posts on lith

infectiuos development can be tapered to none by adding sodium sulfite solution to the mixed lith developer. mix the sulfite at 5gms/liter.

Pathways In Art

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, film, morning wood, on photographers, the meta

Achieving lift off…

At our beginning, the first steps, we fall. Lacking in ability and direction, we may crawl for a long time. Too long, maybe.

Artists expand in more direction than one. Not everyone will, so they will suffer from some time of deficiency, some deficit. Generally, we grow in staircase, or spiral, never in a direct path from lower to upper, as sketched in the following:

creative path
finding the path

From the Technical to the Visual. Novice to Proficient is one scale; naive to sophisticated is another way of understanding the progression.

if you start at (T), the technical side, perhaps because your art is bound to complex process, achieving the (V) of your own value and judgement is slowed. The journey to proficient, sophisticated artist may never be completed. Most weekend enthusiasts never move beyond the (T) – the endless: “how do I?”

How to get past that? It will be easy, if you have the drive. That drive to make your own meaning; enough drive to ignore your defective skill, to seek the reward and satisfaction of expression. You need creative drive. You need an internal motivation. That doesn’t come from the world of tedious checklists and corrections of studio assignments.

Photography removed the tedium of many painting studios upon its arrival, digital imaging has done the same thing for many photographers today. Skills will always grow to fill, to satisfy the esthetic need of the artist. Let the creative drive pull you up the slope from novice, away from the tedious technicians.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.
Man Ray

But What About?

Where do I place/ isn’t Ansel Perfect In Every Way? Ansel is known for devising and spreading the Zone System. He also photographed the found land. His extension wasn’t in the image, nor in the narrative capacity of photography. Instead he perfected the light meter and time + temperature work of Hurter and Driffield Ansel’s work was influential, but not even an innovation. His perception of objects is easy enough, his technique engaging enough to occupy swarms of weekend tri-ploders. He is the anchor of the proficient tech’er. He made money selling sweetie pie visions, appropriately from a concession stand in Yosemite, the cornerstone of tourist campgrounds. Parking lots surrounded by park.

Ansel is also called upon by the techno-kid as evidence that their use of new camera methods would be approved. Who cares? The approval of dead poets isn’t life giving, nor affirming. Bones on the path don’t bless your journey.

Let us now avoid Dead Poets Society and the dear Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

anselMoon.png
Ansel Stuck in Tech

Understanding by visual condenses much, emphasizing notions. If the notes don’t work for you, don’t swallow them. These are schema not geometry; directions, not a map. Idea generator, not prescription.

On the other side dwells Sarah Moon. Driven by visual worlds; her followers ask about her technique, after all that is where most togs begin – ‘how’ can I do that.

What do you adapt, what do you adopt? Is your work an acceptance, adoption of 18th century light/shade solution to portraits? Do you hold that working with light and film curves are the actions of creativity; that these satisfy your impulse to make – in that case, you are on the T side, and probably don’t understand why.