Solarization Darkroom and Digital

By John Siskin

Bonnie's Hand This is a straight version of the original 4X5 negative. © John H. Siskin All rights reserved

I wanted to compare one of my favorite techniques from my wet darkroom with a technique from my digital darkroom. This technique was first described in the 19th century: the reversal of tonality after re-exposure to light during development. This technique is usually called Solarization, but it is also referred to as the Sabatier effect. The way that you used to do this was to take the print out of the developer when the print was about half to two thirds processed. Then you would put the print back under the enlarger and turn the enlarger back on, re-exposing the print. Finally you put the print back in developer, and handle more or less normally. If you do this right you get a tonal range from intense black to a silver grey, the effect is quite striking. Areas that would have been light become black, and a line separates the tones. The image is often more about line than tone. I am attaching three images to this blog, the first is the straight scan of the negative, with some of the usual corrections I put on a black and white image: ant extra 8 units of red in the shadows and about 5 extra units of yellow in the mid tone. I made these corrections in Photoshop curves.

Hand, Wet Darkroom Solarization This is the print as I made it by solarizing the tradtional way in the darkoom. © John H. Siskin All rights reserved

The second image is the wet darkroom solarization I made from this negative. No Photoshop here just me working in a real darkroom. This is a copy of the original print, which is 16X20inches.

In this last image I applied a v shaped curve to the original image. This reverses the tonality in a way that reminds me of a solarization. Here’s the curve:

Curve This is the V shapped curve I applied to the Bonnie's Hand file to make the digital solarization. © John H. Siskin All rights reserved

This is what the curve did to my image. Not the same as my darkroom solarization, but very interesting non the less. Notice that the slight color I put into the original file is turned into something very different by the solarization curve. Pretty cool!

Hand, Digital Solarization This is the way the print looked after I applied a V shaped curve to it. © John H. Siskin All rights reserved