This post got started a while ago, then got set aside. Then got added to, with some edits along the way. Just so you know. It's medium long, maybe go pour your favourite tipple.
Let's start out with a bit of a forehead slap. As a reminder, there are potentially two audiences for this blog. Some readers have been following me for a while and are at least somewhat interested in the back story to the photos I create and what I'm up to. Some are photographers and some are not. The other audience, at least potentially, are experienced photographers or dark room printers that are following a link. For some of them what I'm saying might be trivially obvious. Or maybe I'll induce a forehead slap in them as well.
Onwards.
Quick back story is I'm setting up a basement darkroom. The only real hitch was the easel. This is what holds the paper flat, and a good one lets you set all four margins. Here's what it looks like without any paper, showing three of the paper alignment slots, 5x7, 8x10 and 11x14. The 16x20 is hidden by the top arm.
The idea is to slid the paper (in near total darkness with only a dim red or amber light) into the right slot, and over to the left, like below. In an ideal world, the paper is now centred under the head, and you can slide the arms to cover the paper to produce a nice clean margin of nearly whatever size you like. Once the first one is set up, using the back of a piece of photo paper to get the margins and focus right, it's off to the races. It's quick, easy, and best of all, repeatable as you work through iterations of finding the right amount of light, contrast, and dodge or burn adjustments. Don't get me started on dust or cat hair.
In my world before yesterday, doing 8x10 prints from a 35 mm negative, this works well. The paper goes into the slot as shown and life is good. I happen to like doing a 1 inch margin, and usually a bit of the negative does not make it onto the paper. Given me and my camera aiming, that's usually just fine. All this time and there's still a slight tilt to the left.
Except my main purpose in getting this particular enlarger (a Besler 23Cii) is to produce prints from the 6x9 negatives from my GW690. When I set it up for for that, using the 8x10 slot, I found that I needed to move the easel up a bit, and cannot because the stand is in the way. I'm almost ashamed to say I was hung up on this for a while.
In my defence I can only plead that with the combination of the lens and the margins I wanted, the relationship to the 11x14 slot and the illuminated area was not as clear as the photo indicates.
After several printing sessions, I can say that the tough part for me is remembering to change the lens back to f11 (or whatever is appropriate) after finding focus and making sure the edge of the negative doesn't intrude on the paper. That's easier with the lens wide open so there's lots of light on the easel. That makes for a really short exposure time, or a nearly black page. Which I've done a few times.
It's all about the process, taking the time to go through the steps and checking everything, every time. I have seriously thought about writing up a big checklist that would show up under red light, and hanging it near the enlarger.
Some prints are harder than others. Starting with a well exposed negative makes life much easier. A negative with some really bright areas and some really dark areas makes it a bit more complicated. The solution can be to subtract a bit of light in the dark areas, and add a bit of light to the bright areas. Yes, I know that sounds counter intuitive, but it's true. Photo paper gets darker the more light it receives.
There are a lot of variables involved, starting with which film is used and how the negative is exposed in the camera via lens aperture and shutter speed. Then there's the development process, where the chemical concentrations and temperature, time in the chemicals, and the amount of agitation can all affect how the negative looks. Then in the darkroom there's many different paper choices. I've been using Ilford Multigrade Pearl or Glossy. There's the enlarger, with different lighting sources, many lens choices, and filters that affect the light on the paper. Then there's basic techniques like dodging and burning to affect the amount of light on specific parts of the paper to produce the desired image. There are more advanced techniques that I think I'm a long way from trying. Then the paper goes through a chemical development process, similar to the film, where the chemical concentration and temperature, and the length of time in the chemicals can affect the print.
Just for fun, to back up a step before all that, there's the process to manufacture the roll of film in the first place. There's an hour long video here, which I found absolutely fascinating. (It's Destin at Smarter Every Day, and it's part 1 of 3 parts.) To say things can go wrong at any step along the way is a massive understatement. I marvel that the process exists at all.
Sometimes there are happy accidents that lead to an image being better than expected. Maybe the time was a little long and the sky went more dramatic than real life, and yet not overdone. I've been surprised how much cloud detail there can be in what appears to be a dark negative.
So far I've been learning the process, and aiming to produce a nice print. After nearly 300 sheets of paper I'm only now beginning to work making the image better and creative, but not going overboard. So for example, this unposed image of Linda reading with Celina. HP5+, digitized via DSLR, nothing special done along the way. It's the first on a roll, when I wasn't sure if I was into unexposed film yet. It's an ok image, but kind of flat. Were this to have been a posed image, I'd have probably used a reflector to balance the light a bit.
Here's a small version of a few of the prints I've done from this negative. Upper left is the best of what I did at SAIT during the darkroom course. I didn't like how the shadow in the upper left turned out as I was burning down the top right corner, and wanted to see if I could do better. I'm working with smaller margins now, and the photo is cropped in a bit. The top right and bottom left photos show not enough light, and too much light, respectively. Bottom right is what I was looking for. Pity about the spots. The one on the chair above her left elbow is actually a bit of fluff on the chair. Really. Those two tiny spots on her face weren't there in the print before this one. The one above her right elbow has been there all along, even with careful air and brushing. To the good, several other spots have disappeared.
I practiced some spotting on other versions of this print, using the Copic markers. The N4 worked really well. From my perspective, there's nearly an infinite number of spots on any random print if you look closely enough. Trying to invisibly remove them all is a fool's errand. I don't have that much time left in my life. My thinking is to touch them just enough that they're not obvious. Anybody that wants to get on my case because they've pixel peeped the print with a magnifying glass can send their complaint to keith@bitemybutt.com.
I've now caught up on all the printing I wanted from my first pass through looking for images to print. So far, all the negatives have gone into a sleeve in date order. There's lots of them. I'm thinking now that I have 4 different groups, 35mm in both black and white and colour, and medium format in both black and white and colour. For printing, I'm really only looking at the black and white negatives. I've tried printing some colour negatives in black and white just to see what it looks like, and the answer is nothing good. Since the current binder is essentially full, I'm thinking about the best way to organize them going forward.
Then there's the prints. The prints done as I figure out exposure time, and any dodging and burning get dried and go into a box. I've gone back a few times to remind myself of what I was doing or what a specific time looked like. The ones I'm willing to show people go into sleeves in a binder. There are a few that are essentially the second best, typically the one just before the final version, that go into a separate box. They're pretty good, and if someone wanted one for some reason, I'd give it to them.
Just now the major dither is selecting one to go into the Exposure Festival in February. Last fall's darkroom classes were invited to submit a photo. I've got several finalists and I'm trying to choose between them. After all the Image of the Month posts, and 8 years of Image of the Year selections, you'd think would have the selection process nailed down.
But this is different. A fairly small number of people see the images on my blog, and they're digital. Some unknown but fairly large number of people will see the print up there on the wall, right next to the prints that other people did. I don't mind someone not caring for a photo of mine, or liking someone else's better; that's the nature of the world. Or maybe they wonder why I chose the one I did, when they know my work and think I should have selected a different print. But what I don't want is people looking at mine and saying it's not even in the same league as these others and is bringing down the experience. Such are the risks of a public display of artwork.
I'm not exactly sure what is next. I've got the next roll in the camera and have a couple images, so I guess working through the roll is a good start. I've become much more selective about what I take photos of, in part because I'm thinking about printing them, or using them in a book. As someone said, you don't go into the darkroom and mix chemicals to do just one print. My experience is that if I get 4 or 5 good prints from a session, I'm pretty pleased, and it can take mumble mumble sheets of paper to get there.
Then again, printing is constantly flirting with the deep rabbit hole of diminishing results. I suspect that once I reach a certain point, I've done as well as I can do now. The above images were an example of letting several weeks go by, then having another go it, and getting a better result. That might happen again with images that I'm happy with now. Or maybe I'll want to do something different with the same image, trying a different crop, different contrast filters, or different exposures. It's all going to be a fun adventure, and I'm looking forward to it.
As a first plug, the SAIT darkroom class photos will be on display at cSpace, 1721 29th Avenue SW Calgary, starting early February. I'm going to try to get out to lots of the YYC Exposure Fest events. Right now there isn't a lot of info on line about it, but I think that changes next week.
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