Sabatier Effect: Unique Tips and Tricks for Black and White Photography

If you are a black and white photographer who works in the darkroom to make your own prints and are looking for new and exciting ways to manipulate your photos, the Sabatier effect is a fun and easy alternative to the mundane, regular black and white photographic print. When looking at a finished print that the Sabatier effect has been used on, many people cannot even fathom how it was done, for it looks extremely advanced and quite unique, really. But the Sabatier effect is actually quite simple and because there are so many factors involved in the process, no two prints will ever come out the same.

The Sabatier Effect, also known as the solarization technique consists of exposing your black and white print to white light halfway through the darkroom printing process. All Sabatier effect black and white prints come out differently depending on the light sources, the timing ant the developing fluid, but most of the time the Sabatier effect darkens your photo, adding distinctive black shadow-like lines around your subjects and giving your white images a sort of fuzzy, crystal-like white glow. To do a print with the Sabatier Effect, first make sure all of your unused paper is put away and warn anyone else in the room that you are about to turn on the light for a few seconds. Even if you are across the room from them, this bright white light might effect their printing. Place your paper under the enlarger like usual and set the timer to whatever you previously determined would make a good quality black and white print. Turn on the enlarger to expose the print on the paper through its negative. Experiment with the time to get various results, but start out exposing the paper for half of the time you would for a normal print. Once the enlarge is off, take the paper to another enlarger- one that does not have a negative in it. What you are going to do is expose the paper to the bright white light for literally a second or two before flipping it off. Then simply put the print in the developing fluid and follow the usual developing process for the rest of the experiment. You can also try using filters to add contract and other neat effects.