Today was planned to be a session in the colour darkroom after my weekend weaving which you will see in a future post.
Colour Darkroom Time
I’d thought to get in the colour darkroom and pick a couple of pictures to try and weave together on 10×12 paper. The A4 laser printed images were a bit weak so I wanted to do something on Resin Coated paper in the Enlarger.
I picked a couple of pictures from a recent roll of 120 Portra 800 that I shot in the rainy atmosphere of a late night when some road work was going on. To my eyes I could see some great reeflections and I’d noticed that the vehicles have a light shield projected around them on the floor. This is similar to the way a Santander Bike in London, projects a little bike onto the floor ahead of the bike so that pedestrians have some warning. Only on the JCB or road surface grader it is usually lines that indicate a “fence” that the workers should stay outside of for their health and safety. Their lights and reflections were going to look great through my Bronica ETRS onto this Portra 800.
I chose the first image from Film #42 and set to work to see what they came out like. After doing some test strips, full strips and some full prints I ended up with a print on FujiFilm RC Paper
From this test of jsut how the performance of Portra 800 stacked up I figured that if I ever use it again I’ll overexpose by one stop. It might give me a bit more detail then.
After this I selected another negative from the same film that showed the roadworkers having a chat before continuing with the evening’s work. I shot this with a 75mm lens on my 645 Bronica and I think it came out ok as it happens.
You can see from the large print in this gallery that the workers show up nicely but the light fences on the ground do not show up as nicely as they looked whilst I was stood there. I took this image after a chat with the supervisor who asked me to ensure that faces wouldn’t be recognisable as they are prone to getting abuse for working on the roads in these ungodly hours.
The backhoe loader came out ok too and I was happy with the final 8 seconds print then it was time to move on to a print that I might be able to use in some weaving work. I tried the faces of my own portrait and wanted to try some concrete architecture and lines and shadows.
I pulled Film #26 into the negative holder and got on with some Test strips followed by some prints.
You can see from the image above that the first test strip was a bit pale so needed a few more seconds to darken up a little. The Full strip at the bottom of the left image looks nice so I went to do a pair of Full Prints. You can see from the image on the above right that I put the paper into the easel in the wrong orientation. So I wasted two sheets of paper on these before going ahead and redoing it with the correct orientation. You can see in the larger image that the colours and darkness looks nice though and I was happy.
Here is the print of the Car Park Concrete when I had it in the correct way around in the easel.
Time was getting on and I was getting tight to the clock so that Dan would soon be walking around shutting everything down for the night, this means the Colenta too, where the colour prints are processed.
I wanted to print another car park image from the same roll of film so figured that the settings would be the same so I went straight into a Full Print as I hadn’t got the time to try a Test Strip or two.
It came out well on 14 seconds exposure with the Yellow and Magenta Filters set to 110 whilst the Cyan remained at 0. The Aperture of the enlarger was f/8
I grabbed two of these prints off just in time as Dan came into the colour darkrooms to shutdown.
Industrial Action
Once I’d closed down the B1 Enlarger Room I went to the studio area and talked to Dan and Niki about the impending industrial action that is set to be taken on Thursday and Friday. Our review with Alice has moved to the week after due to this strike which is cool, and I found out that other staff in different unions or unable to afford to strike will be in on the Friday. They will be in so I may as well go in and thrash in the dark rooms for the day. I’ll plan my work that I want to do in there and might have a go at the B&W dark rooms as well as the colour.. We’ll see.
I do support the staff who are striking, I’d like for them to get improved pay and conditions and if they’re out on strike then that’s admirable. Fighting for your rights is a noble thing to do and if I was still the union for my work I would follow their guidelines. I don’t think that me being in there using the facilities with the other staff is undermining the strike action, I’ll still be losing some time with the lecturers and some disruption might come of it, but if I can still use the darkrooms then it shouldn’t affect me too much. That said, I do feel for the staff who will lose money on this action but hopefully they will benefit in the long term. Good luck to the staff!!
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