Donegal courtyard

I was looking through my posts of this year, in preparation for an 'Annual Review' (something I haven't done before) when I realised it has been a while since I've done any lith printing.  So yesterday I remedied that.  Not all darkroom papers respond to lith developer - in fact, very few do, but my bestie Foma produce a very good lithable paper (131), albeit on the warm side.  

This was a shot from an early summer trip to Donegal, when we ended up driving through the village of Dunfanaghy, on the Northern shores of Donegal.  I'd printed it before, but not shown it here as the print was decidedly 'meh', but lith brought it a little more to life:

A small courtyard in Donegal.  I liked the palm tree and I liked the old shed, with its raggedy roof.  
Hasselblad, PanF 50 on Foma 131 paper, over-exposed in the darkroom by 1 stop. 

I'd forgotten what a slow process lith is - the image takes about 5 minutes to appear and then another 5 or 10 to get to completion.  The developer is heated significantly more than usual - to around 26 or so degrees, rather than the usual 20 - and the image is over-exposed under the enlarger, by anything up to 4 stops.  'Completion' is a relative term here, since the image accelerates once it begins to react to the developer and you need to be ready to lift the print from the developer before it gets away from you and all the life goes out of it.  Snatch it too early, on the other hand, and you've no contrast in your print. You are under safelight conditions so it's not always easy to determine the right point.  I guess its one of of the things I like about lith - no two prints are going to be exactly the same.