Calotypes are my favorite way of making images with a camera. I have put calotype work on my back-burner for some time as I have been banging my head against the wall trying to get to grips with the Fresson process and ways of carbon printing colour separations. The aim is to make comour carbon prints onto glass and use varoius coatings to “bring out” the print, such as gold for orotones, baryta for white etc – hence my website name “orochrome.com”.

My problem for calotypes (well, one of the problems) is that the paper used is dimensioanlly unstable so colour registration from colour separations is difficult – very difficult . Washi paper eems to be much more dimensionally stable, the washi is much stronger than paper from rag or wood pulp, so I have =been working with very flimsy, less than 30 gram, paper. This has opened a whole new can of worms, washing the paper is a nightmare. Although is is much stronger than the other papers I have used for calotypes, it is still prone to damage when washing for an hour or more. I have had to invent some new techniques to work with and handle this thin paper.

My first attempt to make a calotype with thin washi seems encouraging.