I have to try everything once. Sometimes I find things I want to keep doing. Darkroom printing seems to be one such thing.
Perhaps I could have used my holiday to sleep in, but my excitement wouldn't let me. I got up at 5, mixed my chemicals, set up the trays, and grabbed my negatives. I was going to make my very first prints.
I set my first negative in the holder, popped on the enlarger, set the focus, switched off the enlarger and put down the photo paper, exposed for about 15 seconds, and popped it in the developer. Black.... Oops, forgot to turn the aperture down. I was undeterred. I tried another, this time with test strips, and found a good exposure time.
It was pretty cramped in there, but once I got the hang of maneuvering from enlarger to trays to sink the work flow was as difficult as setting up focus in the micro focus finder (which is ridiculously difficult). Nonetheless, I loved it. I lost track of time and spent close to two hours just playing around with the process. There is something magical about watching an image appear in a bath of developer.
Everything came out just a little foggy. I'm not sure how that happened. Could it be a light leak around the door? Could it be the wrong filter? Could it be a chemical issue? There are so many things to learn, and I'm quite excited to soak it up!
All in all the prints came out better than I was expecting. The failures were also much worse than I expected. I didn't realize just how sensitive photographic paper is. It almost makes me want to cut some out and try making paper negatives in my Brownies. I also want to try contact prints with transparencies, like I do with cyanotypes. Not sure if it will work but hey, I gotta try.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to work again soon, my kids want to be able to shower. They want to be clean? 🙄 Oh well, I guess I'll let them.
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S. D. G.
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