Going to try and take a fediverse along with me on the process of doing a salt print. Salt printing was the first method of producing a photograph on paper invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839. Here is an example of one of his prints.
#altprocess #photography #print #history #darkroom

Here is the image I'm printing. It's a digital photo taken with an infrared converted Sony mirrorless camera.

I take the image and convert it into a negative with special adjustments suited to this process.

I print the negative with a normal inkjet printer onto a special transparency film. Using red helps block a broader range of ultraviolet light, which is what we expose our paper with to create an image.

In 1839 they would have used a paper negative!

I take some 100% cotton paper, trim it to size, mark my image corners and humidify it.

Then I rod-coat the entire paper with salty water with an added sizing agent.

After some time for drying I rod-coat the part of the paper I want the image on with silver nitrate.

The combination of the salt in the first coat with the silver with form silver chloride crystals when dried. These will be sensitive to UV light and will be where the image will form.

Once the paper is dry, the negative is placed face down on top of it. It's then secured and flattened against the paper with a piece of acrylic and some clamps.

It's now ready to be exposed, so I place it in my DIY UV exposure unit for 35 minutes.

The print after exposure.

It will require several processing steps: washing the print and clearing it of free silver / toning it with a gold solution / fixing it / final wash