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The Bromoil Process by Derek Watkins Member of The Bromoil Circle of Great Britain ; |
Derek has just published
a new book entitled :-
BROMOIL - A FOUNDATION COURSE (COST £16.99) - MORE DETAILS - CLICK HERE |
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|
The Bromoil Process by Derek Watkins Member of The Bromoil Circle of Great Britain ; |
Derek has just published
a new book entitled :-
BROMOIL - A FOUNDATION COURSE (COST £16.99) - MORE DETAILS - CLICK HERE |
|
| Bromoil is a historic process that can be traced back as far as 1855
when Alphonse Louis Poitevin patented a method of producing an image in
greasy ink on gelatine sensitised by potassium dichromate. Fifty years later , G E H Rawlins wrote an article in Amateur Photographer describing a similar process, which became known as oil printing. Its main drawback was that the speed of the dichromate-sensitised gelatine was too slow to allow prints to be made with an enlarger. As a result , oil prints could only be made successfully by contact and exposure to sunlight , which meant of course that a large negative was necessary. |
| Then in 1907 , C.Welbourne Piper, a leading pictorial photographer
of his day, wrote an article in Photographic News detailing a method
of turning bromide prints into oil pigmented prints. this method was based
on a suggestion published earlier that year by E J Wall , and became known
as the bromoil process . Its main advantage was that , because it was
based on a bromide print , enlargements of size could be made from the
negative. A bromoil is created by first making a black and white print in the usual way. This print is bleached until the silver image disappears and then tanned. The tanning stage hardens the gelatine in which the silver image was held , in direct proportion to the amount of silver. So shadow areas are strongly tanned , mid-tones less so, and highlights are not tanned at all. |
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Love Lane ( Bromoil Print )
by Derek Watkins |
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After extensive washing and drying , the print, which is
now called a matrix, is soaked in water for anything from
a few minutes to an hour or more. Water is absorbed by the
untanned gelatine, but not by that which has been tanned. Using oily pigments , either in monochrome or colour , the original image is now restored by hand. The ink is accepted by the tanned part of the image but is repelled by the water held in the soft, untanned areas. This inking process allows a great deal of freedom to emphasise parts of the image, omit them, or to add colour selectively. Because of the nature of the process, every bromoil is unique. It is quite impossible to make two bromoils identical. |
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Haworth Parsonage ( Bromoil
Print )
by Derek Watkins |
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| The process, which was once favoured by pictorial photographers , almost disappeared around the 1950s and 60s, but is now once more gaining in popularity. This is due in no small measure to the Bromoil Circle of Great Britain, a group of dedicated workers determined to keep the process alive. |
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If you have any queries regarding
the processes used by Derek Watkins you can contact him by :-
e mail: derekwatkins2@tiscali.co.uk OR by :- telephone: 024 76454419 or Fax : 024 76458989 |
