Working With Bleach

I have always been fascinated by stories of W. Eugene Smith's darkroom work. I have read that he used to print his work very deep and dark and then slowly bit by bit bring out the wonderful detail and highlight tonality using bleach.

After reading Bruce Barnbaum's wonderful book THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY, specifically his bleaching techniques I decided to spend more time bleaching my work. I have done bleaching for years but now am trying to print deeper and draw out with bleach more like Smith did.

This morning I was working on my Khon Thai presentation for the club and tried my hand at the more heavier bleaching. The trick (as Barnbaun points out) is to not use to strong a bleach mix, you need to slowly add bit by bit with a running hose of water to flush out the bleach before it sits on the print to long and burns out a mark on the print. You need to slowly bit by bit take away and wash, take away and wash.

My procedure is to first give a 2 minute agitated bath of the print in a mild bleach solution (yellow bleach solution is about the same color as a indicator stop bath tray solution) then after do the more concentrated bleach on the print with a variety of brushes and also a small squirt bottle of bleach. Will give it a try again tomorrow after work if I can, it is an ongoing thing and I am still changing up what I am doing trying to find the best way to make this work.

Last night worked a 12 hour night shift followed by 4 hours in the darkroom so am a bit bagged right now. I would like to work on 2 more negs tomorrow before going to sleep, will see how it goes. On Monday night (my first day off) is the club meeting where the judge will come in and comment on our themed project, I need at least 5 prints for that, so far have only 2 completed with 2 more possibles drying. I want to get feedback on the Khon Thai project from a neutral observer, hopefully it will be help full.