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Tone your prints

While black and white photographs have a deserved reputation for conveying mood and impact, monochrome images can often be improved by toning. There are various types of toners available and the image can take on a number of colours: selenium, copper, blue and sepia are popular. Your choice should be influenced by the type of image you want to tone and the mood you intend the toner to create. Toning your print also serves another purpose, in that it chemically alters the silver salts in the print to make the image more permanent by reducing the rate at which it will fade. Toning kits are available from large photo outlets and via mail-order companies and websites. See pages 138–139 for advice on digital toning.

SEPIA TONE

The dreamlike, timeless quality of this portrait made it ideal for sepia toning. The original scene had even tonality, with soft, diffused windowlight giving pleasingly even exposure to the face while lightening the child’s blonde hair. The image was cropped to a square format to maximize emphasis on the child’s sweet expression. A light sepia tone was used as the contrast is quite low and a darker tone could easily fill in the shadows.

Canon EOS-1v, 28–135mm lens, 1/30 sec at f/5.6, Fuji Neopan 400.