Task 4 - Darkroom Printing

Part 1:

Timeline

-STARTING POINT-

1. So you start off with getting your film processed.

2. Then you should be cutting all your film into bits. 5/6 images in each row.

3. You should now be ready to hit the darkroom. So when you first go in, you should set the cyan, magenta and yellow filters up at your workstation. Look at the grade sheet and start setting your filter with grade 3 - which is 23y and 56m. Similar to the image below.

4. You should now take out your negative carrier and select the negative you want to use. *ENSURE* that you turn your negative upside down and you place it on the carrier so the image projected would be the right way up.

5. Turn any white lights off.

6. Use the focus light on your timer to project the image on your easel. *ENSURE* that any photographic paper is put away. Now move about the easel to adjust the perfect position. Adjust how close the lens are to make the image closer and further. Make sure you follow any measurements which varies on what you're producing. Set your focus and use your focus finder to find grains on the projected image on the easel. Then turn off the focus light to move on to the next bit.

  

7. Now you should be ready to start. Grab some photographic paper and make sure the timer light is off. Set the timer to 10x and start with 10 seconds. To make test strips, grab a cardboard and start moving along the paper for every 10 seconds you expose the image for. 

If you're making a print, then just go ahead and expose the image to the time after you have made test strips and are happy with the results.

8. Now you will be working with chemicals. *ENSURE* that you use the tongs provided and you are not spilling the chemicals around. If any chemical is thrown into your face then a member of staff will have to take immediate action and get a eye bath ready. 

Once your images are done being exposed, you can now put them in the developer tray. This will be in the tray for 1 minute. In this period of time, you should see your image being visible on the paper.

9. Next is the stop bath. You should put your image in here for 30 seconds. This would just stop the developer and stop turning your image black.

10. Then you put your image in the fix tray. This should be in here for 30 seconds. This would fix your image so that it can be exposed to white light. 

11. Then you should put it in the water bath for 10 minutes so all the chemicals are washed off and then you can dry them overnight.

Part 2:

Research

Henri Cartier-Bresson

This was a french photographer back in 1930's who took classical black and white photography. This picture stood out for me because of how they used to consider shape as an element back in 1930's, and how we still study how shape is an element to a good photo. This image goes in spirals and you can see little kids around all looking down. It looks like it's been taken at the bottom of some sort of stairway. This was created with conventional (film) photography and i think it has influenced the image. I think this has influenced the image because of the shade of colours, it creates the shape of the stairway. Also has elements of high contrast with the kids compared to the stairs which is more low contrast. 

Here is another image from Henri. I like this black and white image because it's been created way back and still looks very fresh. I think this image has influenced other images that are made in this current century. It looks very cool and hipster. It's an image of a lonely man sitting with a cat just facing him. I think this could make it a good film image because the exposure looks really good and the contrast isn't too sharp so the blacks look faded just like the way tumblr filters look. It looks very calm and mysterious how there's no other people around and the streets look fairly clean. 

Sid Kaplan

This darkroom based photographer is one of the finest photo printers in history. I had a rough look at a selection of his work and struggled to pick one. I think there was a few interesting one however, I decided to choose this one because i felt that it had deeper meaning. This image shows clothes being hanged on a clothesline and train tracks right beside. It is almost juxtaposition as it looks though the clothes are literally near the tracks from the angle it's been taken. To an extent, it kinda connotes this deeper meaning of the urban life. I feel like this image shows how sad and unfortunate some people are having to hang some clothes right beside the train tracks which is not very peaceful. The image itself is a print in the darkroom. I think the exposure is really good and the contrast is perfection. The white is crystal white where it needs to be and the black is rather dominant. The exposure also does have alot of details just by looking at the train tracks. You can see the texture of wood just by the way it's been graded perfectly.

Here's another image by the same artist. This image is very creative i believe. It is a darkroom print of fireworks, but the way it's been exposed almost looks very surreal. It looks like an abstract and looks like the film was dirty or been scratched. The exposure on the image is really good and the contrast seems really high because you can just tell the difference from the black and the white, and there's hardly any grey except the bottom half. This image looks very 3D because it looks like the fireworks are overlapping.

These sets of images are really similar also by Sid. I think the main focus point here is the cloudy smokey thing in the centre. The exposure and contrast is good that the smoke actually looks really 3D and real. Looks like some images nowadays when they manipulate everyday images by adding clouds and making it look 3D. I think because the smoke is such a natural thing, it adds a little push to just printing a normal image because it stands out alot as it just contains a lot of different shades compiled together.

Lastly is this image by Sid. I selected this image because it does link to our project with movement. This image is good with the contrast as not a lot of details have been vanished or turned black. I think it's the least best image because it's not really been taken in a creative way. Also, you can tell this is a print by looking on the left side edge where it goes slightly grey. I think the movement in the image has been exposed slightly too dark so you can't tell very much that there's this blurred motion of all the cars. If it was to be slightly a lower contrast, then maybe the details on the trucks would look better.