Several weeks ago I agreed to participate in an alternative process print exchange that was organized on one of the on-line fora I frequent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A print exchange in its simplest form, means that a group of people agree to send a print to each of the folks who participate. In this case nine folks (including myself) enrolled; eight of us are from the US and one from The Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spent a full day on Wednesday printing cuprotypes for this exchange. Yesterday, I trimmed the prints, signed them and packaged them. This morning I took the envelopes to the post office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ‘rules’ of the print exchange require one to send a single print. However, being an overachiever (Ha!) I decided to send three prints*… one photo each from the three northern New England states, each toned differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I chose to send cuprotypes as this process is not commonly used even among experienced alt process printers. Thus, I figured I could do a little evangelizing for this interesting, inexpensive and relatively simple process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stalwart readers will recognize all of these photographs and may even remember seeing them as cuprotypes in the past. I make no apologies for the repetition. They should be ‘new’ to the members of the print exchange <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bellows Falls image and the Tiptop House image are older exposures (from January 2012 and September 2013, respectively) that I knew looked good printed in the red-brown of cuprotype. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Tiptop House print was supposed to end up a chocolate brown tone rather than the red-brown of the untoned print. Obviously this toning method did not quite work as planned. I’m not sure why but I have a hypothesis. I won’t bother describing all of the technical details and glitches here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Burnt Head image is from our trip to Monhegan Island this past June. I was hoping that it would look good in the more neutral tone of a cuprotype treated with an iron-based toner. <\/p>\n\n\n