Printing and Contextual Tutorial
This week I had the chance to get into the darkrooms in the morning followed by a tutorial in the afternoon and some more printing to finish off. I’d taken my last three black and white 35mm films, two from Rome and one from Holyhead, Anglesey to make some contact sheets and get a couple of prints out of them if I could.
After getting to the Uni and heading down to the studios, I saw a couple of my coursemates when I started there over two years ago, they were telling me how they were getting on with Level 6 and how this is their last year. I’m gutted that I couldn’t be full time and stick with them all the way through but needs must and all that.
Upon the correct time and the media stores being opened, I went to see Andy who is standing in for Dan at the moment while he’s out recovering from an op. Andy is a Level 7 student who I met in my first year and he’s continuing on with a masters degree and is a top bloke. He handed over the 35mm Contact Printer, Focus Finder and Ilford MultiGrade Filters so I could jump into the black and white dark room and do some enlarging. First though I had to dial into a work meeting using MS Teams and after the meeting I was able to head back into the red-lit room.
Enlargement Time
I set up my gear on the enlarger, putting some dev into a dish, removing the covers from the Stop and Fix, turning on the tap for the two wash trays and finally switching on the RC Dryer. I selected the first glassine negative holder sheet for film #61 which contained the photos from a trip to Anglesey in August, where I kipped in the car and then went for a walk around Holyhead Breakwater Park. I walked all the way to the lighthouse on the end of the breakwater and it was a lot farther than I imagined. There was some waves splashing against the huge stone walls and making it over the top so I thought it might provide some good images.
I removed all the strips of negs from the sheet and put them in the holders of the contact printing frame. I selected a bright and wide open aperture of f/2.8 and set a single test strip into the contact printer before covering it all and exposing strips at 1 second intervals using my “official bit of black card” The output looked like a three second time should be sufficient.
I risked it and went straight to a full page print rather than doing a single strip at one exposure setting. It paid off as the print came out well, I had some good coverage of the contact sheet images and I was pleased with the result. Time to move onto the next set of negatives.
Next up was film #55, a series of Photographs from Rome and our holiday in August during our cruise around the mediterranean.
I went straight into a full print, in the hope that the settings might work as they were both Ilford HP5 and all developed at home using PQ Universal Dev. I was wrong, the image came out way to dark so there must be some differences in the films and development results. Never mind.
I did another two contact sheet prints using a drop of aperture on the enlarger lens to reduce exposure and then some time removed before I ended up with an acceptable contact sheet.
As you can see from above the progression from super dark to acceptable. I thought that as I had filled the next film in the same camera in the same city that it might be ok to use the same settings in this process. This time I was right, the contact sheet for film #56 Rome including Coliseum came out well first time. There are a couple of frames that are under or over exposed in this contact sheet but I put that down to me using the incorrect settings on the camera at the time. We were horribly rushed at most points of this tour around the city of Rome so I wasn’t able to spend as long as I usually would on preparing shots.
Contact, Coke and Evacuation
Time to go and have a look at the contact sheets with my loupe to see if there are any obvious photos that I should pick to have a crack at printing. Heading to the large table in the studio area where the light is better I bust out my loupe and took a recce. There were a couple on each sheet so I annotated them with my red sharpie and had a chat with a few Level 5 & 6 students before going back to the enlarger. I put everything I had with me into the empty box of paper that I use to store prints and the negs when I’m going back and forth.
On the way to the darkroom Euripides the course leader stopped me to talk about the Prosper magazine photo shoot that I am helping with on the 8th November, and have booked a day off work for. He wanted to check I was still planning on bein gthere as I’d refused an invite to attend a pre-shoot meeting, on a day when I can’t get away from work. This was all good and he’s happy for me to attend when I can.
Getting back to the enlarger easel I took my bottle of Cherry Coke from the box and stashed it in my bag before going back to the prints. As I moved away from my bag I felt that my hand was wet, and I couldn’t immediately figure it out. I was asking if I’d spilled some developer or water etc before I realised that the liquid was the cherry coke and it had been leaking into the box whilst I was stood talking to Euripides. Dammit.
I looked into the box and saw my new contact prints all wet and sticky, as well as the glassine negative sleeves which were all knackered and stuck to the negatives. I was super concerned that the coke might damage the emulsion or it would stick to the glassine sheet and then tear off the emulsion. Being in the darkroom I figured the quickest and safest way to save my prints and negs was to throw them into the water Wash baths. First the contact sheets came out after a good couple of minutes in the water, the negatives were left int he water and then taken out and hung up on the pegs above the sinks to dry. Hopefully it’ll be enought o save them. You can actually see on the contact prints above that there is some brown staining from the exposure to Cherry Coke.
I left the negs hanging and selected a strip of 6 which included a picture of the lighthouse, then put it into the neg holder on the enlarger. I set it up and focussed it before going for a test strip. The test strip was a series of 2 second exposures, as per the spreadsheet at top of this post. I selected an eight second exposure from the test strip and then did a full strip, after the eight seconds under the enlarger lamp I popped it into the developing fluid. I got to around 15 seconds in the developer before the fire alarms in the school of art started ringing out. Time to leave the room and get out with everyone else at the muster point. I did pull the strip out of the dev and dropped it into the stop first then legged it out with everyone else.
Contextual Tutorial
When I went back in after the 15 minutes or so break, I had to go for my Contextual Tutorial with Sylvia.
It was an interesting chat about my Contextual work so far. We discussed the work I’ve done with my artists library and how it relates to the book I chose (The Dark Knight Returns). I explained how it fits in with my practice and Sylvia saw that I’ve written a lot already for the task and she said that if I struggle with the 1000 word limit (+/- 10%) I could always use footnotes to explain points and these don’t count in the overall word count. Very nice of her to explain this to me, I think it should come in handy if I do struggle to strip out some explanatory notes.
I discussed my plans for the 2500 word essay too and showed her the brainstorm of words that I’m contemplating. I will continue with some work on this but first I need to get on with the Artist’s library assignment. Sylvia said that the essay I choose to write about can be used as a prelude to the thesis in the last year of the degree, for my thesis. I explained that I ama a part time student so it won’t be next year that I start writing this final set of work and thesis. It’ll actually be another two years away yet.
Sylvia then asked me a few questions about where I worked and what my job was, with me being a part timer. I explained and we had a chat about my kids, my hobbies and she asked if I had any idea of what I wanted to use the degree for once it is finished. I honestly don’t know what I want to use it for but I’m enjoying the learning experience and picking up new skills and thought processes. She asked me what caused me to come back into education and I let her know that I like to push myself into places outside of my comfort zone and the covid pandemic lockdown, particularly working from home meant that I was struggling with being stuck in the house with just two screens in front of my face. I needed to get out and start doing something to get my brain working again, and I find learning is a good way of doing this.
After the chat we discussed that everything seems to be moving forward at about the right speed and she was happy enough with my contributions so far.
Darkroom Printing Continuation
Back then into the darkroom. I picked another negative of a painted number 13 on the wall of the breakwater. The numbers are fishing positions for competitions, one of which was on as I left the breakwater. I did a test strip with two second intervals and then a couple of full strips that were too light and not exposed enough. I opened up the aperture a little from f/8, to f/5.6 and then finally to f/4 before I was happy with the sea in the background being visible and the detail in the concrete foreground being detailed enough.
The full print I did was exposed well and I was happy with it until I looked at it in the light and I realised that the horizon is not straight, well the top of the wall isn’t parallel with the top of the print.
I went back to the enlarger and measured the distances before doing another exposure onto a fresh piece of Ilford Multigrade RC. When I pulled the new print out of the easel and popped it into the developer I was talking to another couple of students, and lost track of how long it had been in the dev fluid, so it came out too dark, with the concrete being the darkest is now too dark and some detail is lost. Doh.
It was getting on so I put the developer down the drain and then rinsed it down. Then I went around covering the Stop, Fix, turned off the water and put the Dryer into Rundown Mode..
Conclusion
So what did I learn this week? I learnt that I should keep drinks away from my negs and prints, and wha tthe fire alarm sounds like.
It was also interesting to talk to Sylvia so she could better understand who I am and what I think about when I’m taking photographs. She seems to be a great tutor and has come up with some lovely ideas and encouragement about my current direction.
I also learned that I am a bit gutted that the new L6 students, who I started with, will be graduating after this academic year, while I will still have three years left until I complete my course.
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