It might be interesting to also try experimenting with sandwiching negs or exposing paper with multiple negs. Taking a piece of completely exposed lead, scratching it up and overprinting could make for some nice darker scratches. Or you could actually photograph some that was marked up and use that for sandwiching (an old baking pan often has very interesting patterns and scratches). You could play with litho sheets to dodge areas where you didn't want as many scratches. The good thing about the above techniques is that they leave your original neg intact.
<br><br>
If you're not worried about destroying your neg you could try boiling it first. Just touching the emulsion with a pin after it's soft will rip and crumple it exposing areas of complete black. Freezing the neg after boiling also yields some interesting results.
<br><br>
Lately I've been relying more on digital techniques to get the types of wear and weather effects I was looking for. If you don't want to go all the way digital, you could consider using digital images just to make scratch and texture negs and still print everything in a wet darkroom. For some images I've used an old CD case scanned with a black background to get a really scratched surface to use as a channel.
<br><br>
I've included a photograph that I added some weather to.
<br><br>
Be sure to let us all know what techniques end up working best for you.
distressing negatives and prints
in Black & White Practice
Posted
Hi there,
<br><br>
It might be interesting to also try experimenting with sandwiching negs or exposing paper with multiple negs. Taking a piece of completely exposed lead, scratching it up and overprinting could make for some nice darker scratches. Or you could actually photograph some that was marked up and use that for sandwiching (an old baking pan often has very interesting patterns and scratches). You could play with litho sheets to dodge areas where you didn't want as many scratches. The good thing about the above techniques is that they leave your original neg intact.
<br><br>
If you're not worried about destroying your neg you could try boiling it first. Just touching the emulsion with a pin after it's soft will rip and crumple it exposing areas of complete black. Freezing the neg after boiling also yields some interesting results.
<br><br>
Lately I've been relying more on digital techniques to get the types of wear and weather effects I was looking for. If you don't want to go all the way digital, you could consider using digital images just to make scratch and texture negs and still print everything in a wet darkroom. For some images I've used an old CD case scanned with a black background to get a really scratched surface to use as a channel.
<br><br>
I've included a photograph that I added some weather to.
<br><br>
Be sure to let us all know what techniques end up working best for you.
<br><br>