Darkroom Experimentation

Joenail

Joenail

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Joe
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I've been wanting to do some experimenting with wet printing for a while now. Not just the 'how does HP5 compare to Tri-X on warmtone paper' kind, but proper, creative, surrealist stuff. Does anyone have any ideas/experience in what to try. I'm only really thinking of basic things, like printing 2 negs at once, moving paper while exposing, exposing paper at an angle, spattering developer instead of submerging, exposing through water, tracing paper, glass, etc.

this sort of stuff, where sharpness, grain & tonal range don't matter.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts/advice since I've never really done anything like this before, only thought about it!

Cheers,

-J
 
Sounds like the contents of my reject bin every time I tried wet printing BITD, tbh...
 
...Care to explain a bit?
Hmmm, maybe this is one for APUG :thinking:
 
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It's quite simple Joe - I was trying to get the highest quality I could, and still made various mistakes, resulting in the very things you were wanting to experiment with doing deliberately. If that kind of experimentation floats your boat, then go for it, no question about it... I was just wishing that i'd actually managed to produce one single wet print that was worth keeping. I've plenty of stuff with other people - the customers were generally happy, but I can honestly say, I haven't a single wet print that I was happy with. Maybe i'm just over critical of my own work, I dunno :shrug:
 
It's a matter of patience more than anything I think. I quite often spend a day & 20 odd quid on paper to get 1 print I'm happy with. BUT, when I'm happy with it, I'm happier than I ever could be with an inkjet print! It's all down to what you prefer & how much money & time you're willing to put in to get it I suppose!

-J
 
I'm just a picky so and so - in 32 years of taking pictures, I've maybe - repeat MAYBE - 3 shots I'm happy with - and i'd love to re-shoot one of them, as I know I could get a slightly better angle...
 
Hahaha I can relate to spending a day & going through a box of sheets just trying to get that one perfect print!

Experimenting with double exposures can be interesting, try exposing different parts of different negatives onto the same sheet of unexposed paper using different times? Burning & dodging. Pin hole photography is amazing if you're curious to try your hand at it? I created a working camera using a cardboard box made light tight & a working shutter over the pin hole, made with just 'every day' items. It was all pretty basic but I got some amazing outcomes exposing Ilford paper.
 
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Pinhole cameras are great. I've got a 4-month-long exposure going on at a few places around the city with cameras made from Pringle boxes & beer cans!
 
@Joenail
Four months!? What're you exposing onto? Those are long exposures.
The curved cameras'll definitely give you an interesting outcome, I used to curve the paper in my box to get a kind
of tilt/shift effect. I worked with paper that had the equivalent of about 25 ISO & it took exactly seven & a half minutes
to expose under continuous studio lights & anything between two minutes to eighteen minutes in varying natural day light.

What kind of lighting conditions are you exposing under over four months? I'm curious :}
 
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They're all taped to lamp posts, traffic lights, aerials on top of buildings, etc. With 2 of them I'm photographing the sun & the changes in height, etc from winter to early summer & the other 2 are just general exposures of the city centre.

How it works, though, is the same way as a normal pinhole-paper camera but without putting it through any chemistry after exposure. You'll know if you've ever turned the darkroom lights on with scrap paper out that it goes grey/pink/whatever. If you do that with something specific being burned onto the paper it works like a normal pinhole, but takes a very long time. After taking it out of the camera it'll stay on the paper long enough to scan & print through a few times. If anything comes out though, it's really blurry & pretty hard to make anything out!
 
@Joenail Oh of course.
That's how the very first photographs were made, right? capturing shadows & all that to create an image. So you'll just stop & fix it at the end to prevent it from exposing further? I went to an exhibition in 2010 called the 'Shadow Catchers' & it was all about pin hole & exposure experimentation in the darkroom. I was fascinated. Make sure you scan & post a few outcomes on here ~ I'm interested in seeing them!
 
IamAshlyRose said:
@Joenail Oh of course.
That's how the very first photographs were made, right?
Click to expand...

Something like that, yeah. Probably not with Ilford MGFB though!
No stop & fix at the end, I'd be too scared of it all turning black :runaway: It stays long enough to scan, etc once taken out the camera though.
 
Joenail
It won't expose it further to blacken it with just the fix but I guess it makes sense if you're just intending to scan the original :}
It'll be interesting to see what kind of light & shadows come thru on the paper!
 
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