Black & White

I managed to get into the "darkroom" the other evening - actually that's the 1/2 bath off the laundry room - and printed some things. The photo above is from the roll I shot with the Franke Jr. a couple of weeks back. All eight exposures came out good. There were a couple of compositional errors on my part but no cut-off heads, nothing out of focus and all the exposures were right on the money. All the negatives were shot within an hour of each other so the lighting conditions were all the same which made it easy to guess my exposures and easier still when it came time to print.

The shot above was printed on a warmer tone paper than the rest of the shots and I toned it a bit with some black coffee. The thinking being since my running buddy was standing in front of a log house, a little brown tone would look better than stark black and white. The effect is pretty subtle but I like it. The remainder of the shots were printed on heavy weight fiber based paper unlike this one printed on resin coated paper. Those are currently drying under some weights so they'll remain flat when dry.

I printed a couple of shots from my European vacation but they could use some help. It was getting late, so I just made straight prints to see how they would look. Next time I print, I'll do a bit of experimenting and see if I can improve on them. I think I can get a real good one of the Eiffel Tower.

Next up I want to get out the 4x5 field camera and shoot a couple of sheets of film with it. I've got some film holders already loaded with film but I'm not sure what the film type is and which of the holders are loaded and which aren't, it's been so long since I've messed with the big cameras. I'll wait 'til the sun goes down one of these days and take the dark slides out, see what I've got, mark them properly and go in search of a non-moving target. I'm sure it'll take me awhile to get comfortable using a camera that you have to focus on an upside down image with a black cloth over your head.