Carlevaro Beach Salt Print

This is a salted paper print made from a calotype.
Printed 17 September 2016.

I wish I could get the color right so that you could see it. I fussed around for quite a while but just could not get it to look like the print. The print has a slightly peachy-pink cast and a nice soft light look...nothing harsh at all. I'm afraid it this image does not even hint at the tones in the print.

Lana Aquarelle paper, 2% Hawaiian alaea salt, 0.5% citric acid, 0.5% sodium citrate, 1% "superclear" pigskin gelatin. I have a batch of different papers salted with this combination, and every print before this one had some problem with fog.

For this print I added more citric acid to the sensitizer and it solved the fog problem, but it did also slow down the printing a bit. It was coated with 12% AgNO3, 10% CA.

2 hours with a paper diffuser, in the shade aimed East away from midafternoon sun. 5 minutes aimed East without diffuser. 90 second blast of straight sun to lock in the darks.

Toning: 0.34 g borax + 3.4 ml 0.2% gold chloride in about 80 ml of water for 20 minutes. Then added a scant 1 ml of 2% ammonium thiocyanate and agitated until the first hint of a shift in tone was apparent: 2 minutes. This shifted the tone away from red toward peach and somewhat more neutral. I think it made the highlights ever so slightly brighter too. I'm very pleased with it :) I'm going to attempt to tone a whole series this way -- but not with this salting solution, which was troublesome. I'll try to capture the color better next time.