Half Dozen of the Other

My on-going attempt to create a step-by-step document of various cyanotype toning processes continues. There have been some failures and the weather for the last few weeks has decided to swing wildly between blazing sun and thunderstorms, meaning it's been quite difficult to actually make any new prints to experiment with. That and my small supply of good-quality 4x5 negatives combines to make this a rather long-term process.

Still, I've completed documentation of five different bleaching/toning processes. The title of the post mentions six because there's two variations on one of the processes showing what happens at extremes of dilution. The documents for each process are combined JPGs showing each stage, with a note next to each stage saying what solution was applied to achieve the shown result. I'll go into a bit more detail here, and maybe copy the more in-depth explanation over to Flickr later.

Oh, right! Flickr! Yes, because of the size of the files, they're being hosted on Flickr. Blogger gets mad at me when I try to post bunches of super-big files and it really isn't the best way to view them either. So, head over and check out This Collection on my Flickr for full views of the documentation.

Before we start getting into the details of each toning process, I want to take a moment and explain what a common word in the article means. "SuperTea" is what I call an easy way to get tannic acid at home without buying the chemical from a supply company. Tannins are present in all kinds of things: tea, coffee, some wines, wood, tobacco, etc. Brewing up an extremely potent mixture of black tea is just a fast, easy way to get tannic acid without buying it.

SuperTea Recipe: In 1/2 quart of water, microwave 8 bags of black tea for 10 minutes on high. Allow bags to steep for several hours. Before discarding the bags, squeeze them thoroughly to get out all that extra tannin. 

While it's fast and easy, SuperTea has downsides. Some pretty big ones. First off, all the stuff in the tea that isn't tannic acid. That stuff will stain your paper. I've had cyanotypes sitting in tannic acid for hours and come out with white highlights. Prints immersed in SuperTea are going to turn intense yellow-brown in just a few minutes. If that. I had one turn brown on me in only a few seconds when using fresh-brewed SuperTea (it works faster hot). So, that's going to reduce your contrast in the image dramatically by turning all your highlights brown. Guess what color it turns your shadows? Also brown. You see the problem. Further, because of the intense base-staining, instead of actually getting different colors you're just going to get different shades of brown. So that's kinda boring. Oh, and don't forget that if you leave iced tea sitting around outside of your fridge? It grows fungus. If you keep it in your fridge, it gets cold, cloudy and has to be warmed back up before it will work very well.

There's no doubt: buying tannic acid itself is better than using SuperTea. It stains less, it works faster and it'll probably last longer since it tends to grow less fungus. The downside to buying the acid itself is that it's not exactly cheap. Not expensive either, but not cheap. Further, most of my goal here in this blog is to document processes and solutions that you can easily (and safely) use from home. While tannic acid isn't particularly toxic, I like encouraging people to find alternative solutions. In this situation... I have to say, get the tannic acid.

Well, that was long! Know what? Imma split this up and do a whole different post on the processes themselves.