Exploring Human Behavior and Death Anxiety Through Art

“Rocky Mountain Beardtongue”
I work in wet and dry collodion (negatives) and use a variety of paper. I’m printing this work in Platinum Palladium. Mostly palladium (70%) and platinum (30%). This is Revere Platinum from Legion paper. This is from a wet collodion negative. You can see my “minute marks”. I ended up exposing this print for 4:50 - I used a warm K-Oxalate for the developer and cleared it with EDTA.
The image is made with north light in my studio - the exposure was 6 seconds at f/5.6 - the negative was developed for 1:20 and no redevelopment. Varnished and printed.

Testing Exposure for Platinum Palladium

Quinn Jacobson June 24, 2022

There’s no easy way to get a well exposed print without spending some chemical and paper money. These are expensive prints as far as photographic prints go. I’m not sure what the exact cost is but it’s in the neighborhood of $8 - $15 USD per print (8”x10”) depending on the paper used and when/where you buy the platinum and palladium.

I just looked and one ounce (28.35g) of palladium on the precious metal market will set you back $1,875 USD. The highest it hit was in March 2022. It was $3,440 USD per ounce! Platinum is just over $1,000 USD per ounce today. The highest it reached was back in March 2008. It hit $2,270 USD per ounce. Everyone used to complain about platinum, now it’s about palladium.

Regardless, I won’t stop making these prints. It is a “perfect” process for the work. I will end up with about 150 final prints in this body of work. You can do the math.