Of course, it’s a guess that the basic exposure gives us 4 units of light in the highlight. It could be 2 units or 9 units and still appear blank white in the final print. Thus, 7 units of flash exposure is also a guess, and several attempts may be necessary to determine the optimum amount of flash exposure. It may turn out that the best print involves a small amount of flash exposure after the basic exposure of the negative and some additional burning of the area. These three variables—basic exposure, burning, and flash exposure—must be juggled about to obtain the best result, but for a magnificent print, the result justifies the effort.
When I printed my negatives of English cathedrals on graded papers, I employed this technique frequently to get a full scale print of the interior architecture while maintaining detail on the stained glass. The windows, of course, are the light source for the interiors, and it’s not easy to get detail on a light source. In order to achieve what I wanted, I generally used a grade of paper with sufficiently high contrast to yield a full range of tones for the interior architecture, apart from the windows. Then I flashed (and often burned as well) to bring out detail in the windows. Without flashing, the windows printed as blank holes devoid of detail, and burning, alone, put an obvious halo around them.
Without flashing, the only approach I could have taken to print the cathedral negatives on graded paper would have been to print on a low contrast paper—making the interior dark, somber, and muted—while the window served as the sole source of brilliance. That would have been a legitimate interpretation, but it’s not how I saw or felt the cathedrals. Thus flashing provided a tool for me to interpret the cathedrals as I felt them.
In general, don’t exceed threshold in your flashing exposure. If threshold is equaled or exceeded, the highlight area will appear gray and dull rather than improved with detail. The whitest white within the highlight area should still remain white. In the cathedral prints, I wanted the clear glass portions of the windows to be pure white, but I wanted the colored glass—and especially the lead mullions separating the panes—to be plainly visible. If I had grayed the clear glass in flashing, the window would no longer appear to be the light source, and the light quality would have been lost.
In Figure 10-8, the background towers are brilliant, and the sunbeams streaming around the central tower are spectacular. However, the distant cliff wall to the left of the central tower is missing, while the blank white sky kills the image. Burning the sky at any contrast level creates problems due to the cliff, which gets too dark during burning. So, following the basic exposure, I remove the negative from the enlarger, close the aperture down to f/45, and add a two-stop neutral density filter from my enlarger. Using a convex-shaped card, I flash the sky downward from the upper corners, going well beyond threshold exposure and tapering to nothing halfway down each side, with far less flashing exposure in the center. In Figure 10-8, the gray sky tonalities are due to flashing, which is also enough to bring out the cliff wall while affecting the left edge of the cliff very little.
Figure 10-8. Sunburst, Fisher Towers
Flashing with Variable Contrast Papers
Variable contrast papers make flashing a rarely needed tool. Going back to printing my English cathedral studies, the task becomes far simpler with variable contrast papers rather than graded papers. The bright windows are the major problem. It is difficult to obtain detail on them while maintaining good contrast and brilliance in the rest of the interior. Using variable contrast paper I print for the interior, essentially ignoring the windows initially. I use a moderate to significant amount of magenta filtration to get the contrast level I want. Then I dial the magenta down to zero and dial up the yellow filtration to burn the windows. Burning the windows entails a bit of excess darkening of the adjacent stonework, but by burning at low contrast it is not darkened to the point that a halo appears.
If I did the burning at the same contrast level as the basic exposure, I would have the same problem that I had with graded paper. But the variable contrast allows me to burn at lower contrast levels, giving me a print almost identical to that of the graded paper print with a bit more tonal separation in the windows. This is due to burning at low contrast rather than flashing at no contrast. A further advantage of this procedure is that I don’t have to remove the negative from the enlarger to complete the print. Thus, the print is marginally improved and significantly easier to print.
While flashing is rarely used with variable contrast papers, it can still be a lifesaver. One example is a photograph I made in 1996 in Utah. On an unusually humid and hazy morning, the sun was coming up behind the imposing Fisher Towers northeast of Moab. From my camera position, the sun’s rays radiated out through the atmosphere, magnificently separating the near cliff and central tower from the distant cliffs and towers. But the entire sky was so much brighter than the backlit rocks that when I tried to print the image, the blank white sky killed it. Flashing saved it (Figure 10-8 and Figure 10-8)!
I used a burning card with a broad concave edge and flashed the upper part of the image, slowly moving the card up and down the sky and even partway down into the central tower and background cliffs. Little of the flash exposure hit the imposing tower in the center of the image because of the shape of the card, but progressively more affected the areas around and above that tower. At the corners, I exceeded threshold substantially, putting a pleasant gray tone into the sky and making it appear that the light was truly emanating from behind the central tower.
The portion of the tower that was exposed to the small amount of flashing showed no appreciable effect. But I could not have done it with burning, even at the lowest possible contrast level, because even the lowest possible contrast (i.e., the highest level of yellow filtration) still has some amount of contrast, whereas flashing has zero contrast. Printing at the highest level of yellow filtration produces an image; flashing at white light yields only levels of gray tonality.
This is an unusual, but very pertinent, example. In general, the ability to burn highlights at low contrast levels (without the need to remove the negative, as flashing requires) can more easily accomplish the same effect as flashing on graded paper. In fact, burning at a low contrast level is often superior because even the lowest contrast level (i.e., a #0 or #00 filter below the lens or in the enlarger, or maximum yellow or green filtration in the enlarger) still yields some tonal separations, whereas the flash exposure with no negative has no separations. It simply boosts the separations made through the negative closer to threshold, or above threshold.
Flashing, either with graded or variable contrast papers, extends your reach into even higher negative densities. This should further free you from any fear of higher zones (those well above Zone 9), and also relax you about getting exposures above the toe of the curve and onto the straight-line portion of the curve. I regularly expose highlights at Zone 9, 10, 11, or higher, then develop the negative as needed (with full consideration of all printing options) for optimum results. Remember that you can expose negatives into the fully usable mid-teen zones, but you don’t want to develop them to such high densities. However, for portions of the negative developed to Zone 9, 10, or 11, you can use burning, low contrast burning, or flashing to bring them into visibility. In the next section on masking, you’ll learn yet another technique to allow use of the higher zones.