A painting of me

My First Print

   21 January 2009, late at night

I decided to take some B&W printing classes at ImageWorks, since that’s where Shima bought me darkroom time, and since I haven’t actually printed a print all by myself before. (When I joined the yearbook there were several people who had been there for a while who knew how to develop and print. Photographers like me who joined late never really had to develop or print their own stuff.) The first class was an intro to using the darkroom. My classmates and I — there were three of us — learned how to use the enlarger, how to fix contrast with filters, how to do test strips, and finally how to actually print. The last step is the easiest, since ImageWorks has a machine to process your exposed negative. The way you normally do it is with a bunch of trays with chemicals in them. It’s probably a bit messier, and the process is much slower. The problem with the machine is you don’t get to see your image form in the developer, which is definitely cool. Still, having dry prints in minutes is hard to beat. Next week I think i’ll try and print photos that are a bit more exciting.

My first B&W print

 

Comments

  1. Are you going to eventually cut out the Shoppers Drug Mart photolab middle man?

  2. Nah, developing colour film is a lot trickier. You need more chemicals, and you need to make sure your temperatures for those chemicals are spot on. For B&W it’s cheaper to do it all myself. I“m not sure the same would be true for colour.

  3. Congratulations!

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