Carbon Transfer Printing with Michael Strickland: An Art Like No Other

Shutter Nonsense
Jul 14
8 min read

Updated: 11 hours ago

A plain-language look at how pigment, gelatin, repeated transfers, and obsessive precision create photographic prints unlike standard inkjet output

Photographer Michael Strickland in his warm-lit stainless steel print lab, behind a wide workstation island with tools and jars on shelves. — Michael Strickland in his custom print lab.

A Photograph Can Be More Than an Image on Paper

Most photographers are familiar with the basic bargain of digital printing: prepare the file, choose the paper, send it to a printer, and evaluate the result. Carbon transfer printing changes almost every part of that relationship. The photograph is built by hand from pigmented gelatin, ultraviolet exposure, water, pressure, paper, and a sequence of transfers that can fail long after the work begins.

In Episode 31 of the Shutter Nonsense podcast, we spoke with master printmaker Michael Strickland about carbon transfer printing. This guide builds on that conversation, combining Michael’s transcript-supported explanation with additional context to help you understand the process, appreciate the finished object, and decide why a photographer or collector might choose it.

You probably won't make a carbon transfer print yourself. The useful goal is to understand what the printmaker is doing, why the process demands so much judgment, and how the material character of a print can change the way a photograph is experienced.

What you'll learn

✓ Explain carbon transfer printing in plain language.

✓ Understand why the word transfer is central to the process.

✓ Recognize how color layers, registration, paper, surface, and relief shape the finished print.

✓ Understand why time, testing, and failure are inseparable from handmade printmaking.

✓ Evaluate whether the process adds meaningful value to a particular photograph or collection.

Carbon Transfer Printing in Plain English

A carbon transfer print begins with a sheet of pigmented gelatin traditionally called carbon tissue. The tissue is sensitized to ultraviolet light and exposed through a photographic negative. Light hardens selected parts of the gelatin. Warm water later removes the unhardened material, leaving the image in relief.

That image does not simply remain where it was exposed. It is physically transferred to another support, often fine-art paper. Depending on the desired surface and workflow, the image may pass through a temporary support before reaching its final paper. This physical movement is what separates carbon transfer from processes that merely use carbon-based ink.

The key word is transfer. The image is built in pigmented gelatin, then physically moved onto its final support.

Michael described the concept with an intentionally simple analogy: imagine a sticky layer that receives the image, then releases the unwanted material and moves the remaining image to the surface where it will live. The real process is far more controlled than tape, of course, but the analogy captures the important idea. The photograph is formed in a gelatin layer and transferred rather than sprayed directly onto paper.

Why Color Makes the Process Much More Complicated

A monochrome carbon print may use carbon black or another single pigment. A color print requires multiple color separations, each carried by its own pigmented gelatin layer. Michael commonly works with cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and additional colors or tonal separations when the image calls for them.

Each layer must be exposed correctly, developed correctly, and placed in the right order. Pigments differ in transparency and opacity, so layer order affects the color produced when light passes through the completed stack. A transparent cyan over yellow may create a different green than the reverse arrangement. This is one reason color carbon printing is not simply the monochrome process repeated four times.

Digital tools remain part of Michael’s workflow. He uses color profiles, channel separations, measured exposure targets, and digitally produced negatives to control how the final layers reproduce the source image. The process is handmade, but it is not anti-technology. It is a hybrid workflow that uses digital precision to guide an analog object.

Registration: Keeping Every Layer in the Same Place

If several color layers are even slightly misaligned, edges can split and details can appear doubled. Registration is the system that keeps the negatives, gelatin layers, and paper aligned as the print moves through repeated exposures and transfers.

Michael punches the materials and uses precisely fitted pins throughout the studio. Once the pieces are punched, they return to the same physical reference points at each stage. The negatives require especially careful alignment, but the pin system turns much of the later handling into a repeatable process.

Carbon transfer printing isn’t difficult because it has many steps. It’s difficult because every step depends on the last one being right.

A useful comparison is a tripod that shifts between exposures. A small movement can ruin a focus stack or exposure blend. Carbon transfer printing multiplies that problem across many physical layers. The finished print may look effortless, but that apparent ease rests on control measured at a scale the viewer will never consciously notice.

The Print Is Built Through Time, Testing, and Failure

Carbon transfer printing is slow because each stage creates dependencies for the next. The printmaker must prepare papers and supports, mix and pour emulsions, allow materials to dry, expose negatives, develop layers, complete transfers, clear remaining sensitizer, dry and flatten the print, and retouch small defects.

The work is not difficult only because there are many steps. It is difficult because a problem near the end can invalidate everything before it. Michael described the final transfer as one of the stages with the largest room for error. A print may already contain days of preparation when it has to be abandoned.

This failure rate is part of the value proposition, but it should not be romanticized. Waste and difficulty do not automatically make an object good. What matters is that the printmaker uses those demanding steps to create qualities that serve the image and cannot be reduced to a decorative story about craftsmanship.

What Makes a Carbon Transfer Print Look Different?

The most important difference is not that the process is old, rare, or complicated. It is that viewers often sense something unusual before they understand why. Michael repeatedly sees people respond to a print with some version of: I do not know what I am looking at, but this is different.

Several physical qualities can contribute to that reaction:

Relief: darker or more heavily pigmented areas can contain greater physical depth in the gelatin layer.
Surface variation: matte, luster, gloss, and selective gloss can change how the print catches light as you move past it.
Material presence: paper weight, texture, sizing, and color become part of the object rather than a neutral carrier.
Pigment density: the image is formed from pigment held in gelatin, which can create a distinctive sense of richness and depth.
Layered color: color is constructed through stacked pigment layers rather than deposited in a single printing pass.

These characteristics can be subtle, particularly when the print is placed behind glass. Carbon transfer rewards close viewing and changing light. It is a process that makes a strong argument for seeing photography in person rather than judging every print from a screen reproduction.

Permanence Is Part of the Appeal, Not the Whole Story

Carbon transfer has long been valued for permanence because the image is made from stable pigments in gelatin rather than a fugitive dye image. Museums describe the process as exceptionally permanent, fine-grained, and continuous in tone. The actual longevity of any print still depends on pigment choice, paper, processing, framing, light, and storage.

Michael uses lightfast pigments and carefully chosen papers for his standard color and monochrome work. He also experiments with earth pigments, location-specific soil, gold leaf, phosphorescent material, glass, and other supports. Those experiments show an important distinction: permanence is a choice within the medium, not a rule that every possible carbon print must follow.

For a buyer or photographer, the better question is not simply, ‘Will it last forever?’ Ask what materials were used, how the print should be displayed, and whether the physical process contributes to the meaning of the image.

Which Photographs Benefit From Carbon Transfer?

Michael does not limit the process to one subject, capture method, or camera. His hybrid workflow can begin with film, digital cameras, phones, plates, and other image sources. The suitability of a photograph depends more on the desired object than on the device that made the file.

Within nature photography, Michael is especially drawn to water, deep tones, movement, and images that can use the dimensional character of the gelatin. Dark, saturated areas may reveal more obvious relief. That does not mean every successful carbon print must be dramatic or dark. It means the printmaker can look for places where surface, depth, color, and paper reinforce the visual structure already present.

Choose carbon transfer for what it adds to the photograph, not simply because the process is unusual.

Before commissioning a print, consider these questions:

Does the photograph depend on physical depth, tonal richness, or shifting surface reflection?
Would the chosen paper and finish support the emotional character of the image?
Is the print intended to be handled, placed in a book, displayed behind glass, or viewed unglazed?
Does the process add meaning, or is it being chosen mainly because it is rare?
Are you willing to collaborate with the printmaker rather than treat the job as a simple file upload?

The Printmaker Becomes a Creative Partner

Michael described carbon transfer as a dual process. The photographer knows the image and the intended experience. The printmaker knows how pigments, paper, layer order, exposure, surface, and transfer choices may translate that intent into a physical object.

That collaboration is one of the clearest differences between commissioning a specialist print and ordering a standard output. You may still begin with a carefully prepared file, but the final decisions are not limited to profile selection and paper names. The printmaker may propose changes to color, density, surface, support, or layering because the medium has possibilities the photographer has not encountered.

Don’t judge a carbon print only by how closely it matches a screen. Judge whether the materials, surface, and depth strengthen the photograph.

This is also why a carbon print should not be evaluated only by how closely it mimics a monitor. A successful print fits the photograph into the capabilities and limitations of the medium. As Michael argued in the conversation, limitations can be creatively useful. The goal is not infinite gamut or maximum dynamic range. The goal is the right object for the image.

Put It Into Practice: Learn to See the Print as an Object

You do not need a darkroom to apply the central lesson of carbon transfer printing. Use three physical prints you already own or can make through different papers and finishes.

✓ Place the prints under soft side lighting rather than flat overhead light.

✓ View each one straight on, then move slowly from side to side and watch how the surface changes.

✓ Look separately at the deepest tones, subtle transitions, paper texture, edge detail, and reflected highlights.

✓ Handle unframed prints carefully and notice their weight, stiffness, surface, and relationship between image and paper.

✓ Write one sentence describing what the material adds to each photograph. Avoid discussing sharpness or color accuracy alone.

Finish by asking: If this image were printed through a different process, what would be gained, and what would be lost? That question is more useful than declaring one printing method universally superior.

Hear Michael Strickland Explain the Full Process

This guide organizes the central ideas, but Episode 31 adds the part that is difficult to reproduce in writing: Michael Strickland walking through the materials, color separations, registration systems, failures, experiments, and creative possibilities in his own words. The video version is especially useful because several stages and sample materials are shown on camera.

https://youtu.be/1DT4X9CVEKw