orotone failure

Remember those orotones I was going to make?

They didn't go so well.

In fact, it would be fair to say that, in terms of going anywhere, they were the Fiat* of orotones.

I went into the darkroom, I heated the Liquid Light until it stopped being Jell-o Light. There were only minor sparks when I unplugged the ancient hotpot from the equally ancient electrical outlet. Things were looking good. I coated the gelatined glass. I waited for it to dry. 

I waited. 

I waited. 

I coated paper. It dried. I made Liquid Light prints of tennis players. Here is one of Rafa Nadal. 

The glass was not dry. It was not even close to dry. And I was determined to do contact prints on the glass, which meant that, you know, there had to be contact between the glass and the negative. So it had to be completely dry. 

I was there for four hours. At the end of that time, it was beginning to be tacky instead of oozy. I weighed my options. Leave it there overnight? Someone would come in and turn the lights on and then I would have $10 worth of useless, sticky glass. 

Instead, I rigged up a sort of suspension system that would hold the negative over the glass. 

Result? 

Still, I went ahead and put the gold on one of them. I shouldn't have. It made it worse. 

Here's the end result, with the two original photos for comparison, both 4x5, shot with paper negatives. 

...Next time, Gadget.

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* What do you call a Fiat on a hilltop?
A miracle.

Two Fiats on a hilltop?
Science fiction.

Three Fiats on a hilltop?
A funny place to build a Fiat factory.

[Cartalk]