Sometimes a Joy, Sometimes a Trial

  I printed this at the weekend and it was a huge pain in the bum to do!

  I went through at least 20 sheets of paper trying to get the contrast and exposure right.  I had to keep swapping frames on my negative due to dust and hair that were in the emulsion - the whole printing process was just a pain.  Sometimes printing is a joy, sometimes a trial.

  Even the toning didn't go as planned.  I wanted to try something i read in the Tim Rudman toning book that i recently acquired.  You blue tone the print to completion, rinse then put it into selenium toner.  The selenium replaces the blue in the highlights which turn a putty colour.  If you rinse again and put the print back into blue toner then the blue will shift to a bright azure blue.  Guess what...it didn't work.  The selenium stripped all the blue back off the print (apart from a slight hint of purple in the shadows).  It seems only some blue toners work well for this.

  In the end i split toned in sepia and blue to get the above final image.  I really don't know if i like it or not.  But i guess each session in the darkroom is a lesson, sometimes a hard one.