In this article I will discuss a new printing technique that I’ve found greatly expands the scope of options available to the fine B&W printer. This technique involves using liquid dyes to control the density and local contrast in B&W printing. This new method has increased my ability to produce exactly the type of print I envision to a degree beyond even my greatest expectations. I hope it will do the same for you.

Limitations of Conventional Dodging

In the past, whenever I have finished making a fine print I have felt the same emotional tug that pulls at many serious photographers. Frustration! Many people pursuing artistic goals experience dissatisfaction after completing a work. There is always that nagging feeling that an image could have been better. In addition, there is often a second type of frustration involved —frustration over having had less than acceptable aesthetic compromises forced upon us at the time of printing by the technical constraints of the medium.

Compromises are made necessary by the unpredictability of photography, dictating that certain tones in a photograph often do not turn out as visualized, that camera filters may give more or less effect than expected, areas of tone may be lightened or darkened too much when the paper scale is adjusted to compensate for the overall or local contrast of a negative, and adjacent tones may frequently be too similar, robbing an image of depth and life.

Despite all the contrast and tone control tools available to me through the Zone System, including those of my own invention, I have long felt the need for something more. I have searched for a tool that would offer me a range of options when making a print, similar to the range available when making a negative. I have found such a tool in dye dodging.

Although I use burning techniques quite extensively when printing, I have customarily done very little dodging — largely because not much dodging can be done on any one print. If a print is to receive a base exposure of twenty seconds, it is obvious the total dodging time available is also twenty seconds. A lot can be done with this if dodging is required in only one print area. Even two or three areas can be managed if not much dodging is needed in any one. However, extensive tone changes in a variety of print areas are out of the question with conventional dodging because total dodge time is always limited to the total exposure time.

Traditional dodging is also not very precise, often requiring that a print be repeated due to a visible dodge outline or dodging that is not quite uniform.

Dodging has always been a very limited tool, not only because of its time constraints and imprecision, but also because it is restricted in scope and can be used only in certain print areas and tones. These difficulties are the direct result of how conventional dodging is performed.

Dye Dodging B&W Prints

I am not the first to lament the limitations of dodging and the uncontrollable nature of the medium of photography. Nor am I the first to seek new tools for broader creative printing potential. In fact, I can hardly claim that dye dodging is a new technique in the strictest sense. It is simply a new blending of parts of several old concepts, including dodging, masking, opaquing, retouching, and variable contrast control.

Nonetheless, dye dodging offers a means of tone and contrast manipulation far more controllable and selective than any older method. It is also sinfully quick and easy to learn and apply. To emphasize this last point I should tell you that my very first attempt at dye dodging was used to illustrate this article when it first appeared in D&CCT magazine. With a couple of minor exceptions, that first attempt was enormously successful. You should expect similar results on your first day using this technique.

What Do You Need?

The list of tools necessary for dye dodging is very short:

• You will need a 25–sheet box of outdated B&W 4x5 sheetfilm. If you shoot 8x10, buy a box of 8x10 film. (Every city has some old geezer with a garage full of out–dated film he swears he uses and is still good. Make his day and buy some, but don’t try to explain to him why the film is worthless for normal photography!) Drop all 25 sheets into film fixer, then wash and dry. Be very careful not to scratch or mar this film.
  
  
• You’ll also need a roll of 3M photographer‘s tape. This is black, about a half inch in width and looks a lot like narrow crepe paper. Other tapes would probably be effective, but this is the safest and easiest to use.
  
  
• Your regular spotting brush, and perhaps a slightly broader brush, will also be necessary, as will the light–box you no doubt already possess.
  
  
• Finally, a large part of the success of this technique is due to the very fine quality of the color negative retouching dyes (that’s right, color retouching dyes for B&W printing) sold by Veronica Cass (800–472–9336).

You could probably find other dyes (having different characteristics) to try with this technique, but I’m looking for a very subtle change in my prints. So the Veronica Cass dyes work to perfection for my purposes, and have unique qualities which are very necessary to dye dodging. Why toy with success? Purchase the Veronica Cass Negative Retouching Dye Set consisting of six small plastic bottles of colored dyes. One set should last quite a long time.

Here’s how to begin dye dodging:

Put the negative you wish to print in your glassless negative carrier. Tape it down on two sides with 3M photographer‘s tape.

Place a sheet of the blank outdated film you fixed and washed, emulsion side up, on top of your negative. Tape it down on the two sides where you did not tape your negative.

If printing a medium–format negative, use an ordinary hole punch to punch holes in the sheet of blank film where there are protrusions in your negative carrier (if yours has such protrusions) so that it will lay flat on top of your negative, or cut the sheet of blank film down to the right size. Then tape it down.

If you wish to try this technique with 35mm negatives you will need a strong magnifying glass and a steady hand. Although it is possible to use dye dodging with 35mm film, you will probably find it less rewarding than with larger formats. Use the same hole punch trick to overcome any protrusions in your negative carrier or, again, cut the blank sheet of film to a smaller size.

I print with a diffusion head enlarger. If you use a condenser or point source head, you may find it necessary to add a second blank sheet of film in order to elevate the dye surface out of the negative plane’s depth of focus. Although I have not tried dye dodging with contact printing, I can not think of any reason it wouldn’t work. You must find a way to affix the negative and blank sheet of film to each other to avoid the possibility of movement.

A note about one last variation: a friend and colleague uses a glass 4x5 negative carrier. He found he had to wait an inordinate amount of time before closing his carrier and printing, so that damp dye areas would not adhere to the glass of the carrier. Adding a few drops of rubbing alcohol to his dyes (he chose to employ stronger dyes than those made by Veronica Cass) accelerated drying and solved the problem. He’s been dye dodging for about a year and has been permanently taping the negative and cleared sheetfilm together into a sandwich. This allows him to reprint the negative without starting from scratch or having to realign his negative and dye–dodged film.

I prefer to approach each printing of a negative afresh, and therefore don’t tape my negative and dye layers together permanently.

Applying the Dyes

All dyes are applied to the blank sheetfilm resting on top of your negative. This leaves your original negative completely untouched and allows you to reinterpret a negative at any time by simply replacing the blank sheet of film and beginning anew. It also ensures that the dye layer will be well above the negative emulsion and therefore out of focus.

Place your negative carrier, with your negative and blank sheet of film taped into position, into your enlarger. Compose, focus and print the negative as you always do. The blank sheet of film will cause a very slight increase in your printing exposure time.

Use all your customary printing techniques, except dodging, to get the best possible print you can from your negative. In other words, just proceed with making a print as usual, ignoring the extra sheet of film in your carrier and the fact that dye dodging may be used later.

When you feel you have achieved the best possible print available to you from that negative by conventional printing techniques, examine the print for areas you would like to change. Dye dodging can only lighten tones, not darken them, but since darkening tones is easily done by more traditional methods, this is not a problem.

Dye dodging can be used with graded or variable contrast B&W papers. It is slightly more versatile with the latter, but entirely effective on both.

After deciding which areas you wish to change in the print, remove your negative carrier and place it on your light box with the blank sheet of film facing up. Since both sheets are taped in register, you need only readjust your easel when returning the negative carrier to your enlarger.

Place two or three drops of the color dye you have chosen to use (more about this momentarily) in a shallow dish or other receptacle. Also keep a few cotton swabs on hand and a small cup of water. Do not dilute the dye. It is used full strength. The water is for dye removal should you make an error.

Dip your brush into the dye and wipe off the excess on a piece of absorbent card or tissue. Do not dry the brush as much as you would when spotting prints.

Apply dye to the blank sheet of film over the area of the negative to which you wish to add density. Start with what you perceive will be the most difficult area. This way, if you should happen to err so badly you must replace the blank film and start over (this is unlikely), you won’t have to waste time redoing easy areas you got right the first time.

Remember not to dab continuously at one spot, but rather move the brush around, spreading dye as evenly as possible within the area you wish to cover.

The Veronica Cass dyes take hold in the gelatin slowly and also build density very slowly, much more slowly than spotting dyes, so it is very difficult indeed to accidentally go too far. Veronica Cass dyes ar also very clean and do not streak, or leave residue or water marks.

When you have completely covered an area you wish to dye dodge, go on to the next, giving the first area time to dry before you return to it to add another layer. You will find you get little density change with only one or two layers of dye. This slow build–up makes the dyes very easy to control. Apply dye out to the edges of the image area you wish to dye dodge.

If you should accidentally “go over the lines”, remove the unwanted dye with a damp cotton swab. If you find on printing that you have applied too much dye to an area, much of this can be removed with a moistened cotton swab even though the dye may already have dried.

Areas where dye has been applied unevenly can be smoothed out, again using a damp cotton swab to push the dye around until it is more even. More dye will then have to be added to replace what the cotton swab removed.

When you have finished dye dodging all the areas you wish, return the negative carrier to your enlarger (you need not wait for the dyes to dry) and make another print exactly the same way you made your best print before adding dyes. Periodically making another print while dye dodging will allow you to monitor the progress of your dye dodging and make changes, adding or subtracting dye, as it proceeds.

When all the dye–dodged areas of your print are perfect, you’re done. You had already worked through all your other print making steps when you made the last undodged print, so when you finish dye dodging you should be finished printing except to make extra copies.

Aesthetic vs Practical

As you can see from the way I approach dye dodging, I consider it to be a creative/artistic tool. I think of it as something subtle to be used for putting the “finishing touches” on a nearly complete piece of work, making tonal alterations that add to a print’s beauty.

However, there is no reason dye dodging cannot be used as a more practical “corrective” tool also. Some of my workshop students have successfully employed dye dodging to help them print negatives that had too short or too long density ranges.

To my surprise, one student used dye dodging to successfully increase the density of slightly underexposed buildings in the foreground of one of his prints in order to be able to give the print more overall exposure, thereby making it easier to print an overly dense sky in the same negative.

Dye dodging is sufficiently versatile that it can be used for the most subtle and the most extreme tone control.

Selecting Dye Colors

There are six colors in the Veronica Cass Negative Retouching Dye Set. They are Fawn Brown (dark yellow), Grayene (neutral gray), VC Ochre (yellow), VC Aqua (blue green), Scarlet, and VC Mauve (magenta). Depending on the type of tone change you desire and the printing paper you are using you may use all of these at one time or another.

For graded paper, you may find Aqua, Grayene, VC Ochre, Fawn Brown and Scarlet increasingly effective in the order given. For minimal dye dodging try the Aqua or Grayene; for maximum effect try the Fawn Brown or Scarlet.

With variable contrast papers we have the added benefit that yellow and magenta dyes will tend to slightly decrease or increase print contrast as well as effective negative density. Compared to variable contrast printing filters, the Veronica Cass dyes do not cause much contrast change because of their low color saturation, but can produce perhaps as much as a half–grade change up or down in some cases. The contrast change available is subtle but potentially useful. Use VC Ochre and Fawn Brown to add density while reducing contrast, and VC Mauve to add density while increasing contrast. Use Grayene for added density with no contrast change and Scarlet for more vigorous addition of density without a contrast change.

In these Technical Articles it is unfortunate that I cannot include photographs as illustrations. In the case of this subject at least, sample photographs would be extremely informative.

In the absence of photographs I should tell you that dye dodging is very simple and extremely effective. When I purposely got very sloppy applying dye dodging to a part of one of my photographs, just to see what I could get away with, I was amazed to find my sloppiness did not show in the print.

I am not advocating sloppy technique. I only wish to point out how easy dye dodging is and how difficult it is to make an irreversible mistake.

Changes made with dye dodging can range from extremely subtle to severe, and in every case, what you’ve done can be made completely invisible.

The most surprising thing I discovered while developing this technique is that it can easily create a wonderful illusion of increased depth and contrast in a print. Prints made identically except for dye dodging (i.e., same paper grade, exposure, etc.), can appear to differ substantially in overall and local contrast as a result of the illusion dye dodging produces.

In one case, dye dodging just the mortar between the stones of a wall, produced a dramatic increase in the apparent depth and three–dimensional appearance of a print.

To explore subtleties, try dye dodging areas that do no immediately appear as though they might benefit from dye dodging. You can always remove the dye if you don’t like the effect!

It is very informative and rewarding to play “what if” with dye dodging. Experiment with it extensively and you’ll begin to understand the countless possible variations and the substantial depth of control dye dodging offers.

Conclusion

For me, dye dodging has no drawbacks and no flaws, and I am certain you will find it every bit as useful and easy to do as I have. It is the only technique I know that allows you to make highly local tone and contrast adjustments and does not require a computer or masking.

I have found one significant danger inherent in dye dodging. Dye dodging so greatly expands one’s printing options that there is the risk of going too far. One must be careful to maintain the integrity of photography‘s greatest asset—its illusion of reality—by not carrying tonal manipulation so far as to make the image appear manipulated, unreal, or not photographic. Be careful to stay within the bounds of the illusion!

I now consider dye dodging to be single most versatile and useful technique of all those I have invented. I take it into consideration with every negative I print. It has completely changed my approach to print making and dramatically elevated both my options and expectations. There is not doubt about it: dye dodging has made me a substantially better printer!

But, I am also faced with a discouraging situation. I realize that I now have the capability to significantly improve on many of the prints I have made in the past and am sorely tempted to do so!

I hope you will face the same dilemma.

David Kachel