Wow, OK I have abandoned my posts here in blog world. Well not for long. As an avid viewer on flickr, always checking out my contacts and groups posts I try to read every one's descriptions below their images because usually there is a reason why they wrote such a description.
Today I stumbled upon a fellow contact's image asking for help on how to create such a black and white image. Well since I recently was asked by someone locally to teach them about photography too, I thought why not! Maybe I should write a blog about my techniques and skills I learned through my nine years of experience in Black and White Darkroom development.
So here they are.
My advice to any individual using a darkroom for black and white photography is this. Printing is just about the same thing as capturing an image in your camera onto that negative. It's all about the light sensitivity as well as the chemical process. That goes to say it all starts from the moment you shoot, to developing your negative, to processing your final print.
Now sometimes the problem lies with the first initial thing shooting. You could have over or under exposed your negative when you pressed the button to take the shot. (don't worry this can be fixed sometimes later on in processing.)It can also have happened while developing the negative. Maybe you developed to long. Forgot to use the stop bath or in most cases you didn't fix it long enough. Which is easier to go back to then most realise. I have forgotten the times exactly but usually on the box it will tell you the brand of film's development time, stop, and fixer time. I usually try to find a happy medium to start with. Like for example: If it tells you to develop within 5-10 minutes I usually will do about 7 or 8 for good measure. Same goes for the others. Now a good sure sign you developed long enough is if when you go to dump the developer is it purple? If it is then you are on the right track. If not you need to agitate a little more and longer. As for fixer you usually can't tell unless you pull it out and look at it. That's why I usually go through the whole process rinse the fixer and then pull it out to look at it. You can always stick it back in the tank and fix it again.
Now when your negatives are finally done and dry it's time to print.
The best advice I can give anyone when it comes to making a great quality black and white in the darkroom is ALWAYS make a TEST STRIP!!So many fellow peers and students never do this and go straight to printing and waste all kinds of papers because it doesn't turn out right. Depending on the negative itself I usually stick with a stop on the enlarger to about a medium to low light setting and work from there. You can always boost the light if needed. Take a piece of cardboard (sometimes inside the black bag with your paper comes this thicker piece of white or black cardboard in it as well. Do not throw it away!) This is a great essential tool for test printing and other things like dodging and burning. I still have a stack of these things with my old negatives in binders upon binders. You are probably asking me. OK, what is a test strip? how big of a piece do I need? and how long should I expose it?
There really is no right or wrong answer to this and I think this is why most skip this part.
I used to always do a contact sheet first so I knew which images would be easier to print out first and which ones were going to drive me nuts, then go from there. As I got more experience I just went straight to the test strips and worked from there. Whether you realise it or not both test strips and contact sheets can tell you a lot about the images light sensitivity. After you do both or one of the two you will learn more and be able to pick out how much light will be needed to use just by glancing through it on a light table or looking up above through it under the fluorescent ceiling lights outside the darkroom. Making it easier to know about what light setting and time will be needed for each frame.
Now back to the test strips. Like I said there really is no right or wrong answer to how long you should expose it for nor the size of the test strip. This really is based on you and your preferences. I will tell you this though. Make sure the strip is big enough to read (about an inch to 2 inch thick and maximum of 10 inches in length.)and I usually try to place it on the main focal point of the image. I used to do my test prints in 2 second sometimes three seconds intervals. This way it was easier for me to read after I developed, stoped, fixed, and rinsed the strip.I could go outside of the darkroom take a look and tell OK it's between 9 and 12 seconds. Most of the time I would take an estimated guess from there but you could definitely do another test strip from 9 -12 seconds and figure it out that way.
When you do a test strip I always wrote on the back the seconds I used and what the right exposure was as well as the number fstop on the enlarger telling me how much light I was letting through the image to expose it. That way if I needed to come back to it and make another print I had it handy and didn't have to go through test printing again.
If you find the test strip is still not in the right amount of contrast you want. You may need a red filter for the enlarger. But that's if and only if you tried the enlargers highest or in some cases lowest fstop setting. There are so many who use the filter way too much. Usually if you need to use the filter in most cases it is because like I said before the initial problem was in the shooting. You probably under exposed the image. Especially if you try letting as much light in as possible and it still isn't turning out. It's over exposed if it's on the lowest setting and is still too bright therefore the image gets too dark to fast.
In that case you can try using the filters to save the images off of that negative but try to remember for next time when you shot before what fstop, ISO, and shutter speed you used previously so you can play with it and figure out what works out better for that type of shot and light setting.
Now there are other tricks of the trade like playing with the ISO,development time, using filters on the lens of your camera, etc. but I find it is for the more advanced when you already know the
basics and know how of developing. Once you get the basics up top. Contact me and I can teach you my more advanced techniques that I developed on my own. :)
Hope this helps anyone out there looking for advice to use while in the darkroom developing those beautiful black and white images. If you would like to share your images with me I'd be more than happy to take a look and give my advice. You can reach me through here under comments or look me up in flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/people/kimberlytrundle/. If all else fails feel free to email me at any time at trundle_kim@hotmail.com. :)
Kimmy
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