So I'm super excited to be here an entire day in the dark room is like the perfect day for me, so I'm super excited about that, and the Van Dyke process is actually a great process, I call it a gateway process it because it's got a look to it and an aesthetic to it that starts to get a little closer to what you see in some other processes but it's super easy to work with, it's a lot of fun to work with, there's a lot of options you can do with a Van Dyke print. I showed some examples of how Jean had some images where she had done a Van Dyke over a sienna type or vice versa, but today we're gonna kinda focus just on the Van Dyke process and some various on the Van Dyke process. So, I talked to you yesterday about how alternative processing is really about experimentation. And as you work, as you figure out, and as you develop your own process and your style, you're gonna figure out there's certain things you want to do, there's certain things you might want to change, and a lot of alter...

native processing is about problem solving. So we're going to go ahead and use the Van Dyke process to start to talk about how you would approach those various issues, ways to kind of subtly modify the process, pretty much everything is really easy to do, super easy to do, and hopefully everything's going to come out great, we're going to make some amazing prints. But, just like with it yesterday, we still want to make sure we have our safety in the dark room so we still have our surface coated. The Van Dyke process uses a couple chemicals which I'll talk about later, but one of which is silver nitrate. Silver nitrate is, it's a diluted form, so it's not a super concentrated form, but it's actually what creates the middle for the UV exposure to work with. So silver nitrate though will stain pretty much anything it touches. If it gets on your skin it'll actually turn kind of a dark gray, a dark brown. It doesn't come off unless you scrub your skin raw but it will just dissolve over time and it doesn't absorb or cause any problems through the skin but if it gets in your eye it can cause loss of eyesight, so it's one of the chemicals that we definitely want to make sure we have protective eyewear with. So I go ahead and put back on my safety glasses and as I said yesterday, once I'm in the dark room, and it doesn't matter if I'm doing silver gelatin or anything in the dark room, I just have on safety glasses. As a photographer, my eyesight is the most important thing to me, so I want to go ahead and make sure I preserve that. I'm also going to go ahead and wear my gloves for any process, like I said, I have nitrile gloves. One dopey trick for these, sometimes the gloves when they come they'll come in a box of like or whatever they'll get really stuck together. Sometimes you can just give it a little puff there and it'll make the glove actually easier to go on, except when you're doing a demo, and then it's harder to go on. So get the gloves on. Now, the Van Dyke process is also way more sensitive to ultraviolet light than the sienna types. So yesterday we left most of the studio lights on, everything ran great. When we actually start the coating process and start working we'll flip the studio into a state of being ultraviolet protected. So to do that, I've got ruby lith, which is a ultraviolet protective material over some of the studio lights. So the room's just going to go kind of a red color. So if you have ever watched a movie or been in a dark room you may be like oh that kind of looks a little familiar. It's the same kind of look. The only thing the ruby lith does is just block up ultraviolet light so it lets through the rest of the light and it doesn't cause the light to get particularly much, particularly darker, so you can work in as much volume of light as you want, as long as you've UV protected it. One of the cool things is, the chili pepper holiday lights the lights you can string up that have chili peppers you can get for the Southwest, they don't allow any ultraviolet light through. And so, just the red light in anything that basically blocks up with the color red. I have flashlights that I've got red caps for, I have a head lamp that's red, so when I'm doing processes, just anything that kind of gets you to a red light. The other option you can use, is you can go to any place that sells light bulbs, and they'll sell what are called bug lights and they're lights that are basically designed to keep bugs from coming to your house and so they have this kind of really weird greenish-yellow glow, those are also safe, and they actually just screw into a normal socket. So you can literally just get a bug light, screw in a couple bug lights into a normal lamp, turn them on, turn the other lights off, and you have an ultraviolet safe environment to work in. I am going to do the coating process, though, with the regular lights on, but you would not do that. I just want to show you the coating process is exactly the same. No actually let's turn the lights off. We'll coat them the right way. We'll coat the paper for the Van Dyke under the lights.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Alternative Processing Handout.pdf

Grayscale Percentage to RGB Values.pdf

MSDS Saftey Datasheets.zip

Bostick Discount Code.pdf

Matt Cutting Cheat Sheet.xlsx

Step Wedge Creation Spreadsheet.xlsx

Alternative Process Actions.zip

11stepwedge.psd

21stepwedge.psd

50stepwedge.psd

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Daniel Gregory

Daniel Gregory started his career working in the high tech industry. Wanting to have a more creative and passionate life, he left all those zeros and ones behind and

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topics covered in this class

Fine Art Fundamentals Digital Photography

Ratings and Reviews

Diordna

For a long time, I have read, studied and tried alternative processing, mainly Platinum/Palladium printing. I want to create longest lasting prints and may be share the info at Creative Live. But this presentation saved me many a hours. A few minutes into the lecture, I purchased the class and as the class progressed, I was extremely glad. Thank you Creative Live, thank you Daniel Gregory.

SFX

Excellent class on Alt Process and fantastic bonus materials included with purchase!!! I have extensive digital printing and darkroom experience but haven't done much alt-process to date. This is perfect timing for me as I have several personal projects that I would like to re-visit using some of these techniques. Thank you Daniel!!!

James H Johnson

I have been making platinum/palladium prints for about 1 year. This is the 3rd workshop that I have attended. The first two were one on one. Daniel has done a fantastic job of covering the material and explained the process it detail and easy to understand. This course is fantastic and highly recommend it.

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Introduction to Van Dyke Printing

Introduction to Van Dyke Printing

Lesson Info

27. Introduction to Van Dyke Printing

Lessons

Class Introduction

Overview of the Alternative Process

Overview of the Digital Negative Process

Working with Black and White Digital: What You Need

Working With Black and White Digital Images: Color Settings

Working with Black and White Digital Images Lightroom

Working With Black and White Digital Images Photoshop

Working With Black and White Digital Images 3rd Party Plug-ins

Avoiding Key Artifacts

Creating the Step Wedge for Curve Corrections

Organizing Your Adobe® Photoshop® Files and Curves

Setting Up the Printer

Lab Safety and Workspace Set-Up

Setting the Maximum Black Time

Getting the Initial Curve Test Numbers

Correcting the Curve

Printing the Curve

Sharing Curves

Caring for the Digital Negative

Intro to Cyanotypes and Safety

Paper and Brush Types

Coating Process and Cyanotype Chemistry

Making the Cyanotype Print

Washing the Cyanotype Print

Creating Cyanotypes Photograms

Toning Cyanotypes and Cleaning Up the Darkroom