So if you saw my Instagram or Facebook story from last night, you may have suspected a blog was a-comin!! lol I was on cloud 9!!

A little back story, I had returned to shooting a lot of film in 2017, and didn’t start developing my own negatives until 2019, upon the urging and support of friend JF ! We met on Instagram, and its so crazy how we can meet people virtually, and connect! JF introduced me to his friend Sarah and they have become great friends of mine, people whom I support, and receive support from! This list could actually go on….I have met so many wonderful people through this common interest!!

ANYWAY…. back to the point of this post (although that IS part of the story :-) ).

So… I started to develop my own negatives, as well as scan them in the fall of 2019. I would see other film photographer friends be so inspiring by doing their own darkroom printing. I developed this small burning desire to at SOME point, learn how to do the same! I was intimidated, can’t fib about that one. I set a goal for myself in January (yes I do make new years goals lol), that this would be THE year to do this…but I’ll tell you, I wasn’t sure I believed that I would actually make it happen.

Over the last 2-3 months, before the virus brought life changing modifications for us all, I had started to collect pieces of a darkroom. I came across the enlarger first, by chance, and that ended up as a catalyst. It sat in my garage for those months, while I slowly accumulated small pieces of the puzzle, not with any sense of urgency. Once we were supposed to stay safe at home, but not even right away, I decided that this would be a great time to take this on. I ordered the last few things I needed and Chris helped me set up a pretty cool little darkroom in the downstairs bathroom! He even put up a black out curtain on the back of the door so I can print in daylight hours and not worry about the huge light gaps in the door!! Best guy EVER!!!

So now to the meat of it. I have a TON to learn lol. I will continue on my quest to make images that speak to me and learn how to make them look in print, like I “saw” them in real life! I still scan my negatives as well, but now, I will have another outlet for those really special black and white memories!

With no further ado:

The set up is, enlarger, timer and developer/stop trays on the main table. Behind me on a make shift shelf on the sink holds the fixer tray. Red light on the sink, papers sitting on the toilet that made a great table lol….black out curtain behind the door! Ready to rock and roll!

Overall, I feel successful! I did something I had never done before, I got a pretty pleasing result, and I didn’t die. ;-) I’m going to share my images from least successful to most successful and why I think this is!

I chose to print all my first images on 8x10, so I could get a feel to what they could do. I will print smaller after this, but this was great for me to see! The reason this image of my Gabby was not as strong to me, was because my negative was not a solid “dense” negative. I didn’t have as much time under my belt shooting film, after having shot exclusively digital for years (this shot was taken in 2017). When I DID shoot film early on in my career, I didn’t have nearly the knowledge I have now of the nuances!! My exposure was NOT spot on, and also the film I was using does not have a contrasty look by nature, so to make me really like it, I would add a little contrast and / or increased blacks! That is something I could do in the darkroom, but I don’t have any clue how to yet lol.

This photo of Hannah was taken indoors with rating my black and white film at a higher speed than the box indicates. I have seen the success of others doing this, especially with this stock of film. Overall I am pleased with it as a first print, but like the image above I’d like to see a tad more contrast or blacks.

This last image was the first one I printed (the test print with the stripes on it was my VERY first print in the darkroom, and the print below was my first full print!). I chose to print this one first because I remember developing and scanning this roll, and also remembered the conditions I shot the photo in, and was BLOWN away at the results. It was shot rated WAY higher than box speed, at a relatively low shutter speed, under the tungsten low light in my living room at around 9pm. Yes she was exhausted lol. The grainy goodness isn’t overwhelming, the tones, the clarity…seriously life changing on how I thought about the capacity of black and white film, this one in particular! I think I got a little confused on the exposure time on my test print, and I should have gone with a shorter exposure but it’s still gorgeous in person!

To wrap things up with a bow around mini stack of photos…I am so glad I finally DID IT!!! I had help (thank you Bill), I had encouragement (so so many), I had YouTube!! lol I tried printing 2 other negatives that were just, in my opinion duds as far as quality when I saw what I made. Remember though, there are no mistakes, only learning! I mean, yeah I made mistakes, duh ;-) (left the focusing light on the enlarger when I opened paper packet, forgot to reset the lens aperture after I did my grain focus to the correct aperture for the exposure, not once, but TWICE lol, and got my times messed up the first few times in the chemicals)!! We are made from both successes and even more so from our mess ups!

If you print your own images in the darkroom, want to offer tips that helped you, or want to hear more of MY experience, please reach out! This is such fun to connect with and learn from each other!

Stay safe and healthy and love to you all!!

<3

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Made a goal happen! My first ever darkroom printing!