How to print in a darkroom

This I’ll learn from my friend Roy, who is a darkroom printer from London. Working with Roy, I can learn tons of things which I wouldn’t be able to learn from books, conversations with other amateurs, internet articles or blogs. This is amazing to me and also it is great addition to our friendship! We’ll be working together on materials which I hope we will be able to produce to the highest level. Where sparkling highlights will be signing and shadows will be warm and full of details.

Focomat IIc and De Vere 705 enalrgers.

Last Saturday we’ve been printing for our first client – Janie

who brought her old and never printed negative film. This film has been sitting in a drawer for around 50 years. On that day it has been for the first time, put into Roy’s De Vere 705s enlarger. As a matter of learning we’ve been learning how to properly get good contrast keeping details in shadows and clean fully detailed highlights. Roy showed me how to properly dodge the print. I think I need to exercise on this as my dodging is really poor… I’ve never been good on that so I always wanted to avoid this but it looks like my time has come… :D. I need to get down on it and finally learn how to do this properly.

Roy’s darkroom

is the most unusual in the world… I had a great pleasure to be able to print and feel the mood being there with all those warm lights turned on. Roy with his enormous engagement was helping me with all those small details. He’s ready to repeat the same things five times unless I understand the layout, process and how Roy has been doing this for many many years. This is hard to describe what amount of knowledge he is giving to me. All those small details like agitation, temperature of my chemistry and workflow direction. Combining all those bits and pieces makes me so “rich” in this matter.

Idea to create it like that

This is not a secret that my darkroom has been inspired by his own. I have tried to create my own place very comfortable and inspiring. Being in my darkroom is real pleasure making pictures. Mine doesn’t resemble cool and white laboratory. It is warm and calm place where classic music sounds gently. There are no noisy and distracting cooling fans. Slight smell of chemistry surrounds me from everywhere.