According to Flickr, I made my first film post back in April of 2009. Since then, I’ve shot many feet of stock, learned quite a bit about line and shadow, and managed to become a decent processor of black and white negatives. I’ve enjoyed sharing my work by scanning negs and posting them online, but they never have the same impact that they would framed, hanging on a wall (I’ve had a shot at that, too).
When I decided that I wanted to try developing, my father-in-law eased me into things by giving me a trove of film paraphernalia that was sitting unused in his garage. Besides a Yashica Mat-124G TLR, the bin contained a Paterson tank, reels, thermometer, and other processing accessories, alongside an enlarger (covered in dust-abating trash bags). I gladly accepted the lot – I’d been studying up on developing, and it seemed achievable. The whole darkroom thing felt like a far-distant goal.
An axiom of photography goes something like, “It’s not a picture until it’s printed.” I’ve got a nice Epson 13×19 inkjet photo printer that produces big, beautiful color images – I need to use it more for that – but I’ve never been sold on the black-and-white output. At the same time, something just feels “less-than” about digitally printing a photo that came to be in an analog process. I’ve been itching to carry that through to the next step, emulsion to emulsion. A week ago, something in my head told me it was time.
I stripped away the plastic of the bags covering the apparatus and found that I’d been gifted an late-70s Omega rig with a Chromega B Dichroic color head. What’s that? It’s purported to have been of the better enlargers for home printing of color photographs. I don’t plan to print much color (if any at all), but the color filters built into the unit are perfect for controlling the contrast of black-and-white prints as well. Its external power supply buzzed a satisfying buzz when switched on and the in-line timer did its job when asked. The whole thing seemed in great shape, except for the burned-out halogen lamp. With a replacement for that and a few more supplies, I figured I’d be able to convert a windowless bathroom into a weekend darkroom and be on my way.
My father-in-law was excited about the prospect of showing me the ropes, so I took him along to Hollywood on a Freestyle run. As always, the staff there was awesome and hooked me up with what I needed – bulb, trays, tongs, safelight, and paper. I went with cheap Arista chemistry and paper – a resin-coated pearl – as I knew I’d be blowing through a lot of it in trial-and-error exercises.
At home, we set to work light-sealing the bathroom door. It was easier than I’d expected, with a simple blanket-and-towel arrangement. As with film developing this time of year, cooling the chemistry down to the proper temperature was a pain, but that was the biggest trial of the afternoon – I’ll take it. Trays out, safelight on its perch, tongs at the ready, we got to it.
With guidance, I did well enough. I made a few boneheaded moves – mixing up tongs, placing paper on the easel wrong-side up (made an interesting ghostly image) and such. A couple of the runs took quite a few tries to dial in the proper exposure, but I didn’t mind. Like seeing that first strip of negatives come out of the tank, watching an image quickly rise in the developer under the red glow gave me a charge. I don’t know what I thought would be so daunting – it’s easier than film, really, and you get as many chances as you need to get it right. My reward for a few hours’ work was a small batch of prints that I’d consider a passable first effort.
The next day, my son and I made another set of attempts, and came up with an even better batch (shown above). We accomplished one of them – a tonally-complex architectural shot of a passage at UCLA’s Royce Hall – in a lucky single pass. The results so far are easily good enough to set me on a quest for mastery of the process. Next time, I need to work out the system of filters on that enlarger so that I can control the contrast of the prints, which seems to be the trickiest thing.
