Printing Snow Laden Branch: Fomatone MG Warmtone Glossy

Another film negative from my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera. This one is part of a series of images I made one winter’s night in the city of Sandpoint. The snow fell heavily, and I was itching to make some photos.

Under the bright glare of the streetlights there was a wonderful wintry look as the soft fat flakes settled on the trees and branches. I took this handheld with my manual focus 150mm f4 Mamiya lens.

I decided to print this on Foma Fomatone MG glossy warmtone paper. I have been experimenting with this paper recently and have come to appreciate the slightly warmer tone I get in my developer (ECO 4812). I get the sense that the paper does not deliver quite the contrast range of the Ilford MGFB Classic I normally use, and this negative provided additional challenges in that area.

The negative has decent contrast between the tree limb and the background. The struggle is to get the snow white enough and the background distinct all while keeping a strong black in the tree branches.

After a couple of test-strips I saw that there was no point in the soft filter. I needed to find a ‘break point’ on the hard filter where I could achieve the black-white transition I was after.

My first print at f11 at 32 seconds came close. The whites were good but the blacks not strong enough. A half stop (45 seconds) more on the test strip looked like it would add too much gray to the snow. I opted for a quarter stop at 38 seconds. This was not too bad.

There is good detail in the texture of the branch. An interpretation where the branches are completely black seems out of reach, but I wished I could get the branches blacker.

Looking again at the hard filter test strip I thought perhaps I could expose it at 64 seconds then hold back development. I made the exposure then watched the blacks come in during development under the safelight.

One notable feature of the paper developer I use (Moersch ECO 4812) is that by moving to less than the 3-minute nominal development can increase the contrast. With ECO 4812 the highlights come in very late, sometimes in the last minute or so.

For this print I probably pulled the print at a minute and a half or slightly more. My technique was to wait for the blacks to come in fully then stop development letting the highlights fall where they were. The timing I don’t think is exact as it depends on the exhaustion of the developer and the paper type and degree of exposure, hence the development by inspection.

The result was very good…

The tree limbs are darker, and the snow retains a good whiteness. I have some large dust spots which will be a challenge to spot out as they sit on a large uniform light gray space.