PAPER NEGATIVES

by Ted Peterson
Another thing that you may want to try and is something different. That is an item called "paper negatives. It is something you should try.
Paper negatives are prints that are made by using paper as a negative. Make your regular print with a film negative. Make sure that you use a thin or single weight paper. Also make sure that there is NO printing on the back. A lot of the paper out in the stores has "Print by XX" or the name of the maker. Also some of the paper has water marks in the paper. Do NOT use any of these types.
You should use a soft grade of paper 1-2-3. The exposure has to be long because you will have some gray tones in the high light part of the print.
Develop the print as you do most of the time. Dry the print but DONOT ferrotype the print. Make sure the print has less than normal contrast, no deep black and no clear white.
All the retouching will be done on the back of the print. That is the reason that you cannot have any printing on the back.
Take a strong light and look at the print with the front toward the light and you will be working on the back. The contrast will be build up by retouchnng on the back of the print. You can use some soft lead pencils or crayons. You can also use chalk. If you are using chalk dip a q-tip in the chalk and dab it on the back.
If you made too large of a correction you can use a soft eraser. If you used chalk or soft pencils you can erase the bad part without harm.
After you have the print the way you want it to be, you need to make a negative.
Place a new sheet of enlarging paper on your table. Place the sheet that you just made on top with the emulsion side up. Now make the negative.
After developing this you can use it some contests or to hang on your wall. There is one person I know that sells them for some good income. The white part of the picture will be black and the black part of the picture will be white.
Most of the people will now take that negative and do it again and you will have a new corrected print.
You will never have two prints the same. Your time in the developing agent may be different and the temperature may be different. Also you can not correct the back the same. Keep the negative as you may want to make another print later.
You should try this as a large number of the winners in contests, are made by using paper negative.
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