About Prints in General Each photographic print is individually hand-made using fiber-based paper. The printing techniques used ensure longevity of the images, in other words they are "archivally" printed, and if they are not exposed to heat, direct sunlight, or humidity, they will last for many years. All prints are toned using special chemicals that ensure the final image will last for a long time. The papers used and the archival quality of the final prints takes a large investment of time. Sometimes only two or three final prints can be finished in one printing session of an entire day.   Photographic Process All photographs are individually printed creations. The printing process involves multiple steps to achieve a finished print. A negative of a photograph can look dramatically different from the finished print depending on the paper, the techniques and the chemicals used during the printing process. Most of the images displayed are printed on special photographic paper called "fiber-based" paper. Fiber-based paper differs greatly from the other basic type of photographic print paper, called "resin-coated" paper, in many ways. Resin-coated papers are made up of layers of synthetic materials with silver-halide embedded within a layer of the paper which causes the paper to respond to light and photographic processing chemicals. Fiber-based papers are made of layers of natural paper fibers. Either silver-halide in combination with the chemicals chloride or bromide can be embedded within different layers of the paper to give the final result of a warmer tone image leaning towards browns, sepias and reds (chloride) or a cooler tone image more in the range of blues or purples (bromide). Resin-coated papers respond quickly when placed in photo-chemicals, and chemical residues wash very easily from the paper. However, images printed on resin-coated papers are subject to fading, and they do not respond well to many toning chemicals which are used to shift the color of a print and make it archival. Because fiber-based papers are made with natural fibrous paper materials, they respond very differently to chemicals used during the photographic process than do resin-coated papers. Fiber-based papers take much longer, up to 10 times, to respond to photo-chemicals. The results are well worth waiting for, creating prints that can be rich in detail, both in shadow and highlight areas, and can have a wonderful velvet or satin-type texture. Fiber-based papers take up toning chemicals more slowly also, allowing for greater control of fine shifts in color and tone. For these reasons, fiber-based papers are know as "museum-quality" papers among professionals. All of the fiber-based papers used by the artist are "variable contrast" papers, meaning that the gray-scale and contrast of a print can be determined to large extent by the print process rather than by the inherent quality of the paper itself ("graded" papers determine these outcomes to a great extent, and used to be the standard in fine-art photographic printing until recently, when many paper manufacturers began producing a wide range of variable contrast papers). For more information about photographic paper and processing, please visit some resource web site.