Initially I Iiked the cold tones of the original print, but I was doing some toning and thought why not try it with this one. It has strong blacks that I wanted to preserve as dark tones so my experiment was to determine if Selenium + Thiourea would give me the desired effect.

After a brief presoak I immersed the print in Selenium 1:6 for about 1 minute.  I washed the print to stop the selenium action for a good 5 minutes.  I then slipped it into a rehalogenating bleach  until most of the highlights and midtones were gone. There was some dark tone remaining but it appeared brownish now. After washing off the bleach I mixed Thiourea at 30ml A (10% Thiurea stock solution) to 45ml B (10% Sodium Hydroxide stock solution) in 500ml water.  I inserted the print and let the image return until I saw highlights had reappeared (about 2 minutes) and then washed it for a good 10minutes to remove any remaining thiourea. The image was quite brown and not quite what I had hoped for. On a whim i stuck the print back in the Selenium and let it tone fully.  To my surprise some of the dark tones darkened to nearly black once again. I can only assume the color shift from the Selenium was occurring and it was now leaning toward the purple tones or affecting the grain size so the visual difference is darker. Upon dry down the print is a nice overall brown but doesn’t quite have the black dark tones it did when wet. But once mounted and under glass that perception may come back.  Below is a scan of the print with slight adjustments in Adobe Lightroom to try and replicate the tonality.