Platinum, The Rolls Royce Of Printing?

Darkroom member John Kennedy returned from Up North last year waxing lyrical about a platinum printing weekend workshop he had been to. We were very excited that Roberto Aguilar, who ran it, was looking for a London location to run occasional sessions, and immediately got in touch to discuss the possibilities of doing it with us.

Six months later, following a few dry runs, we were ready to offer our inaugural Platinum Printing workshop. Within twelve hours of going on sale all four places were taken. We hastily lined up another date date which sold out in six!

Alex Foreman, Andrew Colgan, Mandi Stewart and Marcin Dzieniszewski brought a diverse range of imagery shot on everything from wet plate collodian to an iPhone, to the first workshop. Following a brief overview of the evolution of the platinum printing process, Roberto explained how he created digital negatives from the participant’s digitised files. This entails individually calibrating them for the combination of sensitser, paper type, means of exposure and developer chemistry. He then proceeded to demonstrate how to coat the paper with one of his preferred Platinum/Palladium solutions.

Once the paper had been allowed to dry it was placed on our UV exposure unit, sandwiched beneath his acetate negative and left to expose. before being removed and run through developing chemistry.

Almost immediately the already visible image began to strengthen in tone and the richness of the platinum became increasingly apparent. While the print washed and dried the group took it in turn to coat and expose their first attempts.

There was incredulity as their first images began to appear, but also slight disbelief from some that their negatives had been properly prepared. It was only as Roberto’s test print started to dry that it became they realised quite how much darker and richer the tones became.

Over the course of the afternoon the participants experimented with different brushes and coating techniques and each of them left more than satisfied with five exquisite prints and the knowledge to be able to continue working with Platinum in the future. Because, as Roberto pointed out, this process (once you understand and follow the complicated preparation assiduously) is easy to carry out with minimum equipment, and yields stunning results very reliably.