Making Albumen Prints from Wet Collodion Negatives

Albumen printing is tricky, but pays off once you get it down.

Today, I was having issues with sensitizing the Albumen paper. I wanted to check the difference between the single coated and double coated paper that I made a coupe of weeks ago. I'm going to be floating a bunch this weekend and wanted to make sure that the double coated paper was worth the effort (it is!).

I used a Hake brush to sensitize (brushed the silver nitrate on the Albumen paper) and got some "measles" on one of the prints and "weakness" in areas of the other print. Tomorrow, I'm going to use the 3 minute float on the AGNO3 - it's much better.

So far, my German Albumen paper is "da bomb"! The final images on Albumen paper will be much better than these, but I wanted to show you the process - as you can see, it's not for pussies.

Checking the print in the contact frame. You can see I have some "brush strokes" there - weak silver from a previous batch in the brush - and my technique wasn't perfect either. Just some quick prints for testing.
Here, you can see those "measles" - other than that, it's okay. Keep in mind, these are "in camera" negatives, or foundation negatives, they have not been intensified or re-developed (yet). That's my next step - I'll compare Albumen prints - before and after.

 
This negative was a bit more dense (maybe 1.75) You can see the "silver issue" in the bottom right. Both of these images are gold toned.

Wet Collodion Negatives Printed On Centennial POP

Here are a couple of prints I made today. I still have some "experimenting" to do before I fully commit to a "style" and "methodology" for printing wet plate Collodion negatives for my project. Today, I used Centennial POP and gold toned the prints. The "Broken Headstone" negative was intensified, "The Stairs" negative wasn't (but will be).

Cenntenial POP
This is the negative from yesterday (70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht) in the Seligenstadt cemetery printed on Centennial Printing Out Paper (POP) and toned with gold toner. It has amazing detail and is very beautiful when it's in your hand - this is a reasonable facsimile, I guess.
 

Cenntenial POP Detail

This is a detail of the broken headstone. This print looks really good. I may have wanted to tone it to a little cooler color, but I'm okay with it.

  

Cenntenial POP
You can see that the lack of contrast is a little bit annoying (although it does look like a painting and the color is quite nice). This negative has not been intensified, once I do that ,and then print it, it will have contrast. I can color the color, to some extent, with the toner. The shorter the time, the warmer the color, the longer the toning time, the cooler the color.

P.S.

Centennial POP is no longer made - sad, but true.