Our latest Open Day on June 8th was a resounding success, with over 70 people visiting us over the course of the event. The first eager beavers even arrived ten minutes before the advertised start time and when our first demonstration began over 40 were crammed into darkroom.
Milena Michalski, who run our Albumen Printing and Developing Your Fruit & Veg workshops, kicked off proceedings, with an immersive overview of a number of her particular practices. She very quickly had our enthusiastic crowd creating their own lumen prints and chemigrams incorporating slices of orange, onion and myriad other groceries!
The group then moved into our darkroom to experience the wonder of watching a black and white fibre print being created by Charles Cave. He explained the mechanics of an enlarger and the importance of making a test strip to determine exposure and contrast, before proceeding to make his first print. For many, this was their first experience of being in a darkroom and even the turning on of the red safelight elicited “oohs” of excitement. This was nothing compared to the response that greeted the gradual appearance of the print in the developer tray. Ten minutes later, with some expert ‘dodging and burning’, Charles had a more than passable finished print.
Dennis Yandoli then dug out our Illy© coffee tin pinhole camera conversions and explained the physics underpinning their ability to capture images photographically. The whole group assembled outside in the scorching sunshine, sitting still for a couple of minutes for a massive portrait on Harman Direct Positive paper. This was then immediately developed in the darkroom, yielding a finished print less than five minutes after it was shot. Who says analogue photography is slow!
Following on from this, Lattina Da Costa demonstrated how to process a roll of black and white film. Beginning by showing how to easily load 35mm film onto a Paterson spool, before explaining the chemical sequence that reveals the negative image. Developer, stop and fix were poured sequentially in and out of the tank, before the film was washed and hung up to dry.
Phil Grey then picked up the baton and explained the importance of contact prints, which provide the first ‘positive’ rendering of the film and enable photographers to select images worth persevering with to the print stage. He demonstrated how to cut up and load negatives into the contact frame. Before proceeding to explain the mechanisms of an enlarger, and how to to use this effectively to achieve accurately exposed results of your precious negatives.
Rounding off the day, Verdi Yahooda showed the diehards of the group, many of whom had stuck around since we started at 11.00am, what can be achieved in the darkroom once the basic processes have been mastered. She demonstrated how Photograms are created by laying objects directly on top of photographic paper before exposing it to light and also how it is possible to layer images and incorporate textured materials.
Thank you to all the interested and enthusiastic people who came to this event. Contact us here if you are interested in coming to a future Open Day.