The Transformed Man (And Other Tales)

Well - what can I say folks except, I am sorry to have neglected you, and hello again. It has been rather a long time hasn't it, but I'll put it down to a necessary need to pull back from writing this every week - it was too much and I felt my creative juices being squeezed dry - for me, when something creative stops being enjoyable then I have to immerse myself less. 

But anyway, that's enough of lousy excuses - I am not going to be publishing this on such a regular basis, simply from the fact that there is only so much one can write about and continue to stay interesting!
So, onwards.
I met someone on the bus a couple of weeks back - I hadn't seen him in a long time (nearly 8 years) - time had changed him - he looked old, and yet when I tickled his memory it was surprising what he was capable of recalling. His name is Malcolm Thompson and he was (and is to an extent) someone who has made their entire career from photography, which is no mean feat. In recent years he has been a printer and processor, as well as doing course work on a monochrome photography course at Dundee's famous DCA.

I like Malcolm - he can appear curmudgeonly at times and yet, underneath that surface is a passionate and experienced photographer capable of not just superb images, but some of the best printing I have ever seen. I asked him how he was doing and he said he'd retired, though he still held an informal portfolio session at the DCA (has asked me to go along . . not sure whether I will or not . . I am not a great fan of these things) and also still had his wee darkroom going at Meadow Mill, and then he said, 'Well, I can't do anything else.' And it struck me then, that his commitment to the photographic image was so total that any other way of earning a living had never occurred to him . . 

Oh Lucky Man! I thought, for that has never been the case with me, but that being said I am still rather proud of my 'amateur' status, because, strangely the only thing amateur about it is that I don't have to earn a crust from my efforts. I can just about do anything I like and the only people apt to comment are myself and my wife, and, should there be any of you left after such a break dear readers, yourselves.

Anyway, back to the grist.

Before I took my break, I had a roll of Delta 400 in the M2. 

I'd broken it out for a trip to St.Andrews extended that to a Sunday wander and then decided I would finish it off on my walk back home from Ninewells Hospital where I had had to have a cytoscope examination (surely the most strange feeling that one can ever inflict on one's urethra and bladder . . short of trying to stuff peanuts up there . . but I digress). 

I had a marvellous time on the walk back, just snap-happy snapping away at anything that took my fancy.

The walk took me through Balgay Cemetery, a place I have walked in ever since I arrived in Dundee some 33 years ago. It never ceases to surprise and that day was no different, with a drear mist popping in and out off the Tay. There was something strangely beautiful and silvery about it, so I went and took some photographs in a place I have walked past millions of times, but never entered . . a waiting room for funeral services.
It sounds quite formal doesn't it, but is in fact just like a wee rural bus station waiting room!
The light and the windows though rendered it magical and rather surreal, so I set the LeicaM2/5cm Elmar at 1/125th of a second and approx f16 and started shooting. 

I even did the unheard of and went and asked a Parky if I could take his portrait . . .anyway.

Now actually from this film something happened which I haven't really found before . . 

I entered the realm of sequences. 

However these were simple, two photograph sequences, rather than elaborate narratives. 

When I developed the film I was rather struck actually by how they seemed to group themselves together on the film, and so have paired a few of them below in what I think are nice little duets (and one triptych) of light and form.
Sequencing is an art, that I have long felt I should pursue (and as you can see below, I definitely haven't got there yet, but it is a start).
A sequence, no matter how loose, separates your precious creations from being 'just' a collection of photographs and takes them into the world of visual narrative. Now if all this sounds a bit artsy-fartsy, worryeth not, I am not going to go all pseud on you (I hate 'art-speak' more than most, having been on the end of it at college) but a sequence isn't artifice, it is a genuine and valid photographic principle, and one which is all the more valid in these days of a billion-images-everywhere-you-turn-anyone-can-take-a-photo-innit.
I mean, face it folks, we (that's you and me I am talking about} have become about as relevant to the modern world as Catweazle.

Spot the difference - both now irrelevant to the modern world (though Catweazle always was . . I suppose that was the point of the program!)





Catweazle discovered the telephone . . or 'Telling-Bone' in a particularly memorable episode, and Mr. W.Eugene Smith created sequences of photographs (and remember a simple sequence can easily become an essay) that are lyrically beautiful and masterworks of craft and an advanced visual perception.
But now everyone carries a camera wiv 'em, innit.
We as photographers are seemingly redundant, because we have nothing to say to anyone except other photographers. Who gives a monkey's nuts about the fine monochrome photograph and print these days? Other photographers. That's about it, or so it seems.
This hit home to me over the holidays when, whilst photographing around the DOJCA building, a back door popped open and out came this young cove and we started chatting. He was awfully nice actually - I believe his name is Phillip Vaughan. Anyway, we talked for a while about cameras and art and it turned out (as far as I could tell) that DOJCA no longer has anything to do with 'traditional' photography. It is all digital and they don't use film, this being said, he did say there was a hunger amongst students to explore film . . but (and this is my own take on it) it is considered as arcane to the practice of art, as a plate camera would be to your average smartphone toting man or woman in the street.
Anyway, rant over, the whole point of what I have just said is that the art of sequence is vanishing, and I for one feel it is a great and solid shame.
Sorry - had to get that out - onwards with the shiite now.

I'll apologise in advance and say I am sorry to say that the images below aren't from prints - I have run out of chemicals and need to stock up and have spent all my recent pocket money on camping gear (more of that later) - so they are scans from my schiite scanner (verticals on the negs are correct, verticals from the scans are not . . grrrrrrrrrrrrr . . some tweaking in Irfan was necessary)

Anyway, comments welcome. Oh and the Delta was developed in good old (very) 1:25 Rodinal. Quite a remarkable lack of grain for such a supposed 'fierce' developer (the scans look rough because the scanner is simply incapable of dealing with anything remotely contrasty, without making everything look lumpy and flat).

The thing about the duets is that they weren't conscious at all, my eye just seemed to pick out similar things at relatively concurrent pieces of time and ordered me to make the photograph. 

This is actually where the method I expounded in 'The Ralph Gibson Experiment' came into play. I won't repeat it again, but knowing that you can pretty much count on the film's latitude to deal with everything except the grossest errors of exposure, you can set up at (in Scotland and on 400 EI film and with decent daylight) 1/125th of a second and f16 and just concentrate on composition and things come out pretty much OK. It is a weird thing actually, because by the rules, it shouldn't work, and yet it does.

I think Mr.Gibson should actually be lauded for his discovery, because not only does it work, but it works well.

Anyway, see what you think.

Here's the contact first of all - heart on my sleeve and all that . . warts n'all.

Contact Sheet

And here's the duets - I rather like them, even though they are a diverse bunch.

Delta Frames 2 & 4

And on

Delta Frames 12 & 13

And on

Delta Frames 18 & 19

And then a little tryptich

Delta Frames 20, 27 & 21

I am sure that every single man-jack of you has at least two or three photographs that could go together to make something more than just a single photograph. The above aren't great, but I enjoyed making them, and the fact they are on the same film was a surprise to me - they could be better arranged, but if I start farting around I'll never get this FB posted. So how about doing yourself a favour on a rainy afternoon when there's nothing better to do. Lay out a selection of your bestest prints on as much floorspace as you can allow,and grab a coffee or tea and have a mull over them and see if you can't come up with some duets or trypti or something longer and more narrative. It will set you apart from the also-rans, and might just get your brain thinking about the images you make in a less random, clearer fashion. Not nagging . . but give it a go.
Then see if you can't pursuade a loved-one to comment.
It isn't a skill learned overnight (or in my case at all) but it is something worth doing. Let me know how you get on.

And at the end of it all, wondering how I was going to use up my final few frames I had another go at a 'Leica snaphot' except this time the camera was in it's open ever-ready case around my neck, and all I did was set focus and surreptitiously release the shutter. I am not very good at this though, because shake came in again and yet it led to the photograph I like the most from this session and the one I named this Blog after - The Transformed Man. And no, this isn't a nod to William Shatner's album, this is a title from a 1950's Sci-Fi book, but unfortunately I can't remember the author's name (Alfred Bester?). 

Anyway, the pic suits the title.

The Transformed Man

And that's it folks - FB over and out - hopefully it won't be as long next time.

Take care, God Bless and thanks for reading again

The Ralph Gibson Experiment (Part Two)

Phew, shipmates.
That's all I can say to you . . Phew!

The weather this week has been, to tell the truth, worse than a hold full o' Space Hoppers.
Oh yes, we've been powerful affected by wind, and plenty of it. And what does wind cause? Waves, and not just small ones neither.
Give the wind half a chance and it'll whip up 200 nautical miles o' ocean into something resembling a party of drunken intruders on a cosy evening in.

Now we's used to that, why wouldn't we be? but it does bring with it problems.
Yes we have supplies, and yus, most times the only things to do are to stow the sails and wait it out, but there's one problem they'll never show 'ee on Pirates Of The Caribbean . . . excrement.

Most times in good weather you can sit yourself at the stern and drop till your heart's content and no one'll disturb ye, or just whip off a quick tinkle and back to work.
But in a storm, all there is is the bucket.
And it's no man's favourite job to take that bucket a'deck and chuck it over the side, especially when the wind is coming at you at 40 knots, but it's a job that has to be done. 

I'll tell 'ee shipmates, it's no joke having ten men's droppings blasting back at ye in the teeth o' a gale.
But there, that's life on the ocean wave.

It's bad for old Mog too.
Cats is private creatures.
Watch a cat doing it's business and it'll not really trust ye again.
Normally he'll hop onto the rear rail and drop and spray like any man.
"Kathmandu!" comes the cry and we's leaves him alone, but tisn't safe for a cat on the rear rail in a storm, so he'll head to the bilge pretending he's looking for anything that'll provide a couple o'hours o'fun and we leave's him alone to do his business.
But this week he seemed different.
Like I say we were laid up with that wind and sea, but Mog looked damned assured of himself.
He kept mighty clean, and swaggered around the shop, no skulking, just cleanliness and spit an' polish.
In a word, he was up to something.

Now I abide honesty more than any man-jack alive and when I think something's up, I'll come right out and ask. So I did.

"Mog," I said, "you're up to summat, old friend!"

Now Mog, being a cat, obviously can't speak, but we've been around enough together to know what each of us is saying.

That cat had been peeing somewhere, call it a Cap'n's Sixth Sense. Call it a Keen Hooter, but amongst all the familiar smells of a ship with the hatches battened down, there was not one single whiff o' cat's pish.

Mog looked at me, in that sly way he has sometimes, and strolled off in the direction of Sheephouse's cabins.

(Sheephouse was up above, lashed to a mast with a decent length o'rope to stop him falling overboard and was chucking his interiors into the teeth o' the storm.)

Mog nosed open the door o' Sheephouse's darkroom, jumped up onto a worktop and used his rear to push a bottle forward.

I unscrewed the lid, and took a look. The liquid was a dark reddy-brown, and fairly concentrated looking. I took a look at the bottle again, and larfed. 

Oh how I larfed, my sides split. 

Even Mog was larfing too . . . .

 PSST . . . . DON'T TELL SHEEPHOUSE!

***

I know, I know . . you have been pacing the floors, not sleeping, off your food. Your libido has vanished entirely. The washing-up hasn't been done. Your wife is checking your smartphone for evidence. Your skin has taken on a wan hue. You haven't made a photograph all week. What's wrong? What's wrong!
Nothing is wrong you big baby - worry no more, because Part Two of 'The Ralph Gibson Experiment' is back.
It's big, bold, brash, brave, chock-a-block with bonhomie, bravura and beans. Oh yes, never in the field of photographic experimentation has so much been done by so few for so many.
So hoist your trousers and put a Do Not Disturb sign on your brain, because when we are done, things will never be the same again. Indeed, the world may never be the same again, because we are treading new(ish) and unknown territory, where a monster lurks 'round every corner, and fortune favours the brave!
Of course, literal interpretations of the above are welcome, but then again, most people would consider you utterly mad, so take it all with a pinch of salt and just mutter "F'in Sheephouse" to yourself a few times. You'll get there. Just imagine what it is like for me -  I have to share the same brain with him . . .

Firstly I will preface all this for those of you expecting to see some photographs that look like Mr.Gibsons'. 
It isn't going to happen. 
Why?
Well, as I stated last week, this was purely an experiment to see whether his shooting and processing technique (as detailed in the book Darkroom) would work for me. That is the be-all and end-all. I couldn't emulate him and I have no wish too.

Last week I set you up with a feast of information, and this week, guess what? yep - it's info overload. It will all be needed to be digested, however it is easy, and especially so, if I distill last week's post down to a paragraph.
Would you like that? Would you?
OK, seeing as I am feeling benevolent.


Kodak Tri-X, at mostly EI 400
Sunny day shooting regime: 1/250th of a second at f16
Shoot in bright sun on Tri-X with the camera set for f16
10cc of Rodinal for every film used.
Dilution of 1 + 25.
Temperature 68° Farenheit.
Agitation for 10 seconds every one-and-a-half minutes
Total development time 11 minutes.

How's that for the summation of a life's work and technique (apologies to Ralph - no disrespect meant) but at least if you read the above, it means you don't need to read last week's post . . what do you mean . . you couldn't be arsed reading it anyway?? Were I not of sound mind I might take umbrage at that . . however I am not so I won't. I generally like to think that if you have learned something, and it can be passed on, then one should out of human duty.
So, long-winded preamble out of the the way . . where was I?
Ah yes, basic reference meter readings taken, film loaded, pack-mule fed and burdened with Koni-Omega and sprightly spring in my step as I head off towards Ye Olde Hawkhill in search of some eye-candy.

Grossly romanticised Sheephouse, and we won't be having any of that around here you know. This is Britain.
Eye-candy?
You mean pleasant subject matter don't you?
(Official communication from The Ministry Of Britishness; dated 25th February 2013)

Well, yes, eye-candy isn't really a word that can be applied to the Hawkhill in Dundee - it is a bit of a 'non' area these days - all the interesting bits were demolished back in the 1960's and 1970s and it is now a rough collection of University buildings and low-lying industrial units.
Apparently, in 1954, the Hawkhill boasted 13 pubs, 2 wine merchants, 12 sweetie shops, 15 bakers, 21 grocers, 7 Scots/Italian chippies and 2 bicycle shops. Some 20 years later, it was almost reduced to rubble by redevelopment.
My lecturer and friend from college days, Mr.Joseph McKenzie, detailed the whole lot in an extraordinary photographic essay called Hawkhill, Death Of A Living Community. Sadly this hasn't been exhibited in years, which is a terrible shame. It is a an important statement on the corruption and frenzy from a black period of time in British Architectural Improvements.
Anyway, here's some pictures from the opposite end of the Hawkhill to where I would be starting, to illustrate the changes wrought.

BEFORE
Session Street is on the right

AFTER
Session Street is still on the right, but where has the character gone?

Look at that. I honestly feel that if the wholesale mass crushing of Dundee's architecture hadn't happened, and the money had instead been spent on improving the older buildings rather than knocking them down, you'd have a city that could possibly be regarded as one of the world's architectural jewels. It still retained most of its medieaval street layouts well into the 20th Century.
Anyway, mostly gone now, and along the Hawkhill, one is overcome by, how shall we say, dullness. It does still have a couple of real olde-time pubs though .  .The Cambeltown Bar and The Hawkhill Tavern, but there used to be so much more. 

Anyway, enuff o' me shite . . onwards. 

(Oh, actually, if you are at all interested, photographically, we have the most incredible archive, made by a [ahem] Amateur photographer, Mr.Alexander Wilson and made between the 1870's and early 1900's. They capture a city that was a hub of Victorian Britain - famous for its 3 J's - Jute, Jam and Journalism, but also its lesser known industries of ship building and whaling. It was a place of extremes, from total poverty [found in backies in the likes of the Hawkhill and the Hilltown, to mansions on the upper reaches of the Perth Road and Millionaire's Mile on the East side of town - at one time containing the highest proportion of millionaires in Britain - pretty remarkable when you are talking about Victorian Britain!] Anyway, if you have a half an hour you can find the photographs here.)

Am I trying to take my time here . . well, no . . but I do enjoy a nice meander.
Anyway, here goes - I will warn in advance that my scanner, even scanning in Greyscale, has imparted a pinkish tinge to the following images. They're scans off the contact print, and they've been sharpened a tad and contrast has been adjusted a tad too.
For the full effect of Tri-X in Rodinal one merely has to go to the very last photograph of the crop of Sir Alan Sugar's face and bear in mind it was a hand-held photograph. I think you'll agree the performance is none too tardy.
Oh and I am going to shoehorn in a bit about meter readings here - as I stated earlier I took some average ones before I left the house. According to my Gossen meter the EV's (Exposure Values) ran from 13 to 16, which is fairly typical for round here, so based on the recommended box speed of Tri-X:
At EI 400, EV13 = 1/30th @ f16
At EI 400, EV16 = 1/250th @ f16
His recommendation is right at the top of my readings, so I adjusted by one stop to 1/125th @ f16 for every shot and hoped it would all work out.
Oh, and the text in calm blue is linked to appropriate pages should you be interested.
Right here goes folks - in a rather un-photographer-y way, I am now laying my heart and my embarassment on my sleeve, and showing you the full contact sheet (split up) - there's nowhere for me to hide. Most frames are terrible, but one is a keeper.

***

1

Right, Photo 1:

Well, I hit the Sinderins behind this bloke. He stopped right in front of me, and I hate that, so I backed up whilst he was texting, and snapped at him. I then realised that a Koni-Omega is not exactly a snapshot camera - it is surprisingly easy to use, but it isn't good for an instinctive shot. By the time you have lifted it to your face, the moment has gone, or, people think you are going to assault them - it is that big.
As big as a face actually.

*

2

Photo 2:

I turned up Peddie Street and headed towards the industrial units there - they are bleak and interesting and contain one of Dundee's greatest gems - Clark's All-Night Bakery.
Famously described as 'heart attack central', basically if you find yourself in need of tasty stodge at any hour of the day or night, it is the place to go.
Want attitude? You'll apparently get it, though we have only ever encountered friendliness.
More importantly, want Chips and Curry Sauce at 3AM on a Sunday morning? You'll get it.

This photo is of the roof of Clark's. I have made loads of this same scene over the years and still can't capture it.
And I wasn't successful this time either - soot and chalk in extremis.

*

3

Photo 3:

I headed back towards the Hawkhill, but wandered into Halley-Stevensons - a relatively unknown gem of Dundee. They're the oldest producer of waxed cotton fabrics in the world. So, I would say they supply Barbour etc . . quite something eh!
Situated in The Baltic Works, there are many photographic opportunities.

I was taken by this reflection, but here you see that a rangefinder isn't so good for closeups, because stuff intrudes into the frame but you don't realise until later. It is unclear on the contact, but on the negative the de-silvering of the mirror adds a strange edge to the reality.

Anyway, cropped I think it would work.

*

4

Photo 4:

Halley-Stevensons again . . but look at the vertical . . it's off, and thus renders this permanently annoying for me. Incredible detail though!

*

5

Photo 5:

Same place, but another dull photograph - again the detail is very good.

*

6

Photo 6:

Now this is the one I like the most. It is more me. I like this sort of carefully composed urban landscape detail.
It's at the sculpture entrance to Duncan Disorderly College Of Art.
I used to go there you know . . . and whilst it was a valuable education, despite the nice website, I'll quote Public Enemy again . . "Don't believe the hype".
Unless it has changed dramatically (it may well have; in fact it probably has) I found it to be a creative mincer. Bright optimism in, stifled creativity sausages out. But thinking about it, that was probably just olde curmudgeonly me.
My one solace from the shoehorning of ideas that was occuring in the Graphics Department, was Joseph McKenzie's oasis - the Photography Department.
Joe ran a wonderful ship, where creativity was encouraged. My only slight criticism, was that technicality wasn't emphasised. But that is just me. I like a bit of technical . .that's why I am writing this.

Back to DOJ though, Gerry Badger and Albert Watson went there too . . but as I say, those were the days when they had a photography department. These days it is called Time Based Art and Digital Film - click the link and it will take you there. Notice no mention made of photography! 
Hmmm . . . och well, all this criticism . . bang goes any chance of becoming a part-time lecturer in monochrome photography and traditional darkroom practice . . but onwards.
Anyway, to me this photograph works, however, it also shows me that the framelines on the Koni are possibly misaligned as I cropped it a lot closer than this.

On a positive note - look at the detail!

*

7

Photo 7:

Then it was round the back of the College and down the side, meanwhile these two dogs were barking at me, so I thought . . wait a minute, you can't do that, so I took their picture and stopped them barking.
That's true actually - the Koni stilled them into a stasis which was only broken when I moved away . . oh, the power of that camera, but then again, maybe they thought it was a large black piece of square meat . . .

*

8

Photo 8:
From there it was onto the Perth Road opposite Drouthys and head back to base.
Next up is Williams' Newsagent. This is an old-style traditional newsagent (fags, sweets and papers . . none of yer modern fripperies).
I wanted a to try a close-up of the shutters and so on, just to check the focus on the camera and the ability of the Super-Omegon lens.
No problems there . . just a slightly 'off' vertical which again is no good to me. I can correct in the darkroom should I wish to print such a dull photograph!

*

9

Photo 9:
Further along and as I approached this guy from the other direction I was so taken by his air of melancholy that I was desperate to just approach him and ask if I could take a picture of his sad face, but I didn't (coward) and moved past to stand and browse a shop window beyond him. From there it was terribly easy to guess focus, and point the Koni in his direction and snap. Hence the squintness. He still looks pretty sad, and I've never seen a single customer in his newly-opened mini-mart.

*

10

Photo 10:
And the last in line as it were. The couple approaching looked to me like something out of a Gary Winogrand picture, but, lacking his balls and talent I opted to make a photograph of them by holding the Koni at waist level and pretending to check it. Of course I guessed focus too. At the very last second the baldy guy staggered into my path out of Mennies.
It was literally as I was operating the shutter. Yes it is squint, yes it is shite, but it is amazing that you can use a camera the size of one and a half housebricks in the street like this!

*

There y'go - I've cropped it just to get an idea of what it would look like . . it has gone from squinty snap to instant threat (I think).

Anyway, surprised it was all over so quickly and operating the push/pull film advance mechanism on the Koni, I strode off, determined that I would process these the way Mr.Gibson would!

20 minutes later, film loaded in Paterson tank, all accoutrements beside me at the kitchen sink, I cousulted my notes:

10cc of Rodinal for every film used.

Dilution of 1 + 25.

Temperature 68° Farenheit.

Agitation for 10 seconds every one-and-a-half minutes

Total development time 11 minutes.

Ok, so seeing as I was using a large Paterson tank my ratios of developer to water were 19.23ml Rodinal + 480ml water. Everything else was the same as above. Agitation (the most under appreciated part of film developing) was a gentle 10 seconds (roughly 4 inversions) at 1 minute 30 second intervals, so Zero seconds, then 1 minute 30 seconds/3 minutes/4 minutes 30 seconds/ 6 /7:30 / 9 / 10:30, and then chuck the developer at 11 minutes.
I will also preface this with the fact that I always use a water bath pre-development. A lot of people don't, but I find it lends itself to more even developing, so that was 3 or 4 changes of water at 68° Farenheit with gentle agitation.
All was safely gathered in, processing went fine, drying went fine, and a contact was made and assessed.
One of the frames was without a doubt the clear winner, so I printed it.
I thought I would go the whole hog and 'do a Gibson', so I printed it at Grade 5!



I've Been Fired

I used Kentmere Fine Print VC Fibre paper, developer was my usual Kodak Polymax. It is actually a superb paper and even for the likes of a Grade 5 print, exposure times are very fast. The lens was the 100mm Vivitar VHE at f16, which is a great lens - amazing to think that a month ago it was sitting unloved in its box, growing fungus.

What can't be ascertained from the scan is the print's luminosity. That is something that is quite hard to define and achieve, but is definitely a by-product of negative density. You don't read that much, but the more I have printed the more I realise it to be so. It is a conclusion I originally saw expounded by the American photographer Steve Mulligan, and I agree with him.

This was the densest negative on the roll.

It is very much me.!

And just to show you how well the combination of film and developer work, here's a sectional enlargement. The above print is an 8x10". 

The section below means the print would stretch beyond the 24-odd inches of the DeVere's baseboard. That's a big print.

Sharpened slightly just to empahasise the grain,
which isn't nearly as huge as I was expecting.
The detail is surprising isn't it, especially when you consider I wasn't  using a tripod.

Were you under the impression that a strong solution of Rodinal was grainy? That is the received wisdom isn't it . . . 

Can I stretch to a Part 3 where I have used 35mm TMX 400?

It's possible actually, because I did so last weekend!
So where has this got me? Was it all pointless?
Well, no.
I might not have achieved the Über-Density of a Ralph Gibson negative, but I have achieved a tonality, in the finished print, which I am delighted with.
I have also been surprised, so much so that I intend to use up the Rodinal I have left - I am particularly looking forward to trying it with some TMX 100 5x4 film. I'll also use it in the future at varying dilutions like I used to. I know the agreed sensible route is to stick to one film and developer combo, but you know what, life's too short. It is fun swapping things around - it makes an interesting hobby even more interesting.

And that's it, as they say at the end of all the best cartoons "Tha-tha-tha-that's all folks!"

I hope you've enjoyed this - if you've got any queries feel free to use the comments box and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

As usual, take care, God bless and thanks for reading.
Oh and if you've read this far, you'll maybe not realise that there is a PART THREE - no one seems to have read it - you can find it HERE

Thanks Ralph!

The Ralph Gibson Experiment (Part One)

Mornin' varmints.

'Tis time to split the mizzen and rolic you're thunderjugs, because the old nut-brown meths is ready and waiting, and I'll stand a draught for every man-jack o'you that can bother yer arses to read the writing o' my friend and erstwhile passenger, Mr.H.Sheephouse.

I'll warn ye now - it's dull folks. Duller than a bilge full o' dullness.

However, if you read it, it will cheer him up and he is a man in need of some desperate ego-massage.
It might even make him happy.
And a happy passenger means a happy ship, that's what I always say.

Watch out for the nut-brown though - it'll run right through ye like a dose o'lava.
Mog learned that earlier in the week.

***

So there I was, twiddling my thrumbs and wondering what the hell I could write about, when all of a sudden, something hit me. You'll know by now that I have referred to those two great books Darkroom and Darkroom 2, now long out-of-print, on Ralph Gibson's Lustrum Press - they're great books, but (and this was the thing that hit me) they're also very detailed in the descriptions of each individual photographer's approach to film and wet printing.
Want to learn how the mighty Wynn Bullock approached things -  Darkroom  is the book! Eikoh Hosoe, Eugene Smith? They're all there. Even Mr.Gibson himself has a section . . . and you know what? I love Ralph Gibson's photographs.

Aside from being very singular images of an incredibly personalised approach to photographing the world, they are also (technically speaking) the epitomy of all the things the books say you should never do when processing. Heavy grain, underexposed shadow areas, over-developed highlights, dense dense dense negatives, uncropped. You name it the list goes on, and yet they have a lyrical intensity that is all too hard to find in these days of easy-fix digital photography. 

To me they speak truth, but a strange dream-like truth. 

I think it all comes from his vision. To paraphrase him "I carry my vision around with me wherever I go  . . " You can tell. A Gibson photograph stands out like a sore thumb.

And there in Darkroom  was his approach to the technical side of things writ large and detailed.

When I started scratching deeper (ok, reading the bloody article, harumph) I found that in actuality his 'technique' is incredibly simple:

Kodak Tri-X, exposed at ostensibly EI 400 (although he does list his speed ratings for Tri-X as 100 to 400 but I believe that maybe this is him referring to the varying light conditions he will encounter whilst using each film) - I say ostensibly because like all great photographers he is using the films latitude to deal with any exposure mistakes, and seeing as he says he has been using the film since 1961, who are we to argue with his experience. Obviously too (just in case you don't know it) modern Tr-X is a bit of a different film from the early 60's version, but as far as I can tell, he is still using it, so it can't be that different.
I know this also sounds like he is using 'Sunny 16' (expose the film at a shutter speed equivalent to the film's box speed [400 ASA for Tri-X] at f16 in sunlight), but at 1/250th he is roughly overexposing by a stop (Sunny 16 with Tri-X would be approx 1/500th at f16, there being no 1/400th setting on a camera), so basically he is letting the average light in the scene be exposed at a stop more than sunny 16, so roughly that'll be about Zone VI.
It's all very loosey-goosey isn't it!

As I read further I found myself getting excited - this was a glimpse into a photographer's technique, and it wasn't too technical or over the top. I wouldn't have minded technical actually, but this was a good starting place, especially if (and I'll use that word italicised and in bold and blue) I decided that I might follow other photographers methodologies in the interests of science . . if you know what I mean . . .
I will also state defiantly and definitely now, I have no wish to emulate Ralph's style  - not that I could anyway, but you know there's these guys who use GPS to set their tripods in the same ghostly tripod holes that Ansel Adams' and Edward Weston's tripods were placed in? You don't know about them? Gosh. Well it is true, and it is the antithesis of photography as self-expression (which it is).
So, in much the same way, I have no interest in emulating someone else, it is more that I am very curious about his working methods.
Anyway, back to Ralph - in Darkroom, he states that his sunny day shooting regime is

"1/250th of a second at f16"

also

"Because I almost always shoot in bright sun on Tri-X with the camera set for f16, there's a uniformity to my negatives."

Now this is a very important statement and it intrigued me.

I have never in my life left my camera at a set aperture, have you?

Everyone loves a twiddle and choosing the correct aperture for the photograph is part and parcel of making photographs . . isn't it?

Isn't it?????

Well the proof of the pudding and all that - do these all look uniform? I guess they do . . .

Also, all except the third one of the car exhibit his stylistic trait of using broad areas of shadow. I like this - it makes the photograph breath and live, as opposed to being just a nicely toned grey. In other words it brings a dramatic effect to the photograph, so that it becomes a visual statement rather than just a direct record of a scene/incident.

I mean, look at this:

The Visitor

It's a fairly typical example of my searching for something - the greys are excellent, and though I like them, the photograph lacks any dramatic impact whatsoever! 

The camera was my now long-gone Pentax 6x7 using the 75mm lens. Film was Ilford's beautiful FP4+ at EI 64 and I developed it in Barry Thornton's 2-bath developer . . nice combo? You bet, but it could have been so much more.

Anyway, back to Mr.Gibson and his permanent f16.

I looked at some of his photographs and given how great I find a lot of his photographs, I couldn't understand how it could work. Of course, depth of field is all relative, shortening as you are focusing closer and lengthening as you head out towards infinity, however it is still a very intriguing concept, which, you would think (well I did think) would free one up to concentrate on making pictures and composition rather than the niceties of getting a good negative.

I have always strived to get the best negative I can, and yet if I could produce photographs like those in 'The Somnambulist' (Gibson's great photo essay) I would be a happy bunny.

The other thing he mentions in Darkroom is that he always uses Rodinal, the great developer made for donkey's years by Agfa, and now, not made by them and called R09 (yet it is still the same). 

Rodinal can be tricky - it can give you hellishly dense negatives, and yet it is also wonderfully adaptable. Gibson's use of Rodinal is at the mega-concentrated dilution of 1:25. Now that is strong and certainly stronger than I have ever used it. I always used 1:50 or 1:100, but I stopped using Rodinal a while back when I thought a little journey into the world of homebrew developers would be interesting.

Actually, I started off my home-developing with Rodinal and in fact have the same 500ml bottle I started with . . now over 10 years old and half-full, so that gives you an idea of its longevity. 

It hasn't been pampered at all, just left stored in a half-full bottle for quite a while. I know it worked last time I used it about a year ago, and given what I have read I didn't doubt it would serve me well this time. 

The thing about Rodinal is that it is a superb acutance developer. Yes grain is generally heavier than most people want, but this can be varied by dilution. What it does do, is make the grain very hard-edged thus giving the appearance of detail. It can also be very contrasty and this, coupled with the crisper grain, give the impression of a developer which is a universal panacea. Start enlarging though and you find the grain can be intrusive, especially on 35mm, but I guess it all depends if you like grain in the first place. Different strokes and all that.

For myself, having spent years trying to achieve grainless, seamlessly graduated grey tones in negatives (HP5+ in 1:3 Perceptol being the clear winner of any combo) this little experiment has made me think fceck it, why not give it a go!.

So back to Mr.Gibson. He states that his development regime is:

10cc of Rodinal for every film used.

Dilution of 1 + 25.

Temperature 68 Farenheit.

Agitation for 10 seconds every one-and-a-half minutes

Total development time 11 minutes.

This seems to be the same for every film he develops, which again is quite strange. Which again makes me think that the statement about EI's 100 to 400 is based upon a frame to frame basis rather than per film if you know what I mean.

Anyway, excited and inspired, I armed myself with all this information and thought I should try his method of working and see what happened. 

Oh the lengths I go to for you FB readers - had you not been around (like a pixie on my back) then I probably wouldn't have bothered, but there you go. Before I start to detail things I'll say thank you very much for getting me out and about on a very enjoyable adventure.

The more I thought about doing this, the more excited I became. It all seemed rather too easy! Don't change shutter speed or aperture, just focus, or even use hyperfocal focusing, take aim and fire! How liberating.

Then things hit home with a crash. I did have Rodinal, no problems there. I did also have Tri-X, but that was the problem. I didn't have any 35mm Tri-X, only 120 size. I do have some TMY 400 and also Delta 400, but I specifically wanted to follow his instructions for developing and only the Tri-X/Rodinal combo would do . . so the Leica M2 was oot as it were.

But I did still have a rangefinder (Mr.Gibson is a confirmed Leica rangefinder user just in case you were wondering).

My rangefinder was in the disguise of the heavyweight beast from the blackest pit of the 1970's . . Yes, a Koni-Omega Rapid 100!

It's big and unwieldy, but I rather like it.

OK - so this is a Rapid M (the earlier model) but for all intents and purposes it's the same camera . . except mine doesn't have the flash unit . . .
It does have the horns though!

Being a 6x7cm camera, it was only going to give me ten frames from a 120 film, but that should be enough to test things out.
(You are probably sitting there at your breakfast table, rubbing your beard and sagely saying to your partner "This is one seriously flawed experiment!" well it would be were I trying to emulate his visual style, but I am not trying to do that am I . . . I am merely trying to emulate his processing style . . .)
So, back to Der Schnoogle as they have been know to say in Hamburg . . .
The only problem I could forsee was the "1/250th at f16" thing.

A brief aside: depth of field on Medium and Large format camera lenses is less than on a 35mm camera - it's all to do with design, circles of confusion, spacing and format size. I shan't go into it, but suffice to say that f16 on a 35mm camera gives you roughly an extra foot of depth of field on average, so if I was going to use f16 on the Koni, then my focusing would have to be fairly spot on. I could have stopped the Koni down to f22, which would be fine were I using a tripod or a monopod, but I wasn't going to be. f22 would have meant that my shutter speed would have been roughly 1/60th of a second, and when you are using a camera of that size, you are bringing in the extreme risk of camera shake showing up, so it was going to have to be f16.
I was also going to have to use 1/125th of a second instead of the recommended 1/250th. The reason? This is Scotland - we seldom get bright sunny days and I didn't want to underexpose my negatives (and indeed the day of my outing proved to be a tad overcast) so 1/125th it was.
So, film loaded, sturdy shoes on, pack-mule (for carrying the Koni) fed, brain in gear, and I was ready to go.

Before I went out I took a few readings of average scenes with my Gossen Lunasix 3S, just to see how things compared with Mr.Gibson's standard settings. The EV's (Exposure Values) ran between 13 and 19, so fairly normal for round here. I also thought it beneficial to take some paper to make notes of what the actual readings were after I took each picture at the 1/125th + f16 settings.
This is all sounding a tad bizarre isn't it, but you'd be amazed at what you can learn from reading your notes - indeed being as thorough as you can be is a great aid. I have paraphrased him many times before, but the genius jazz guitarist Joe Pass once said something along the lines of "Learn it all and then forget it all", meaning (I've always assumed) that technique can set you free!
Back to my notes things . . . I was also going to establish what Zone an average reading from the scene fell on, so I could see how things worked. It would be nothing extreme:
Zone V is average grey.
Zone IV is one stop under-exposed (slightly dark shadows)
Zone VI is one stop over-exposed (caucasian skin and concrete!)
I couldn't really forsee things going much beyond this.
And there my friends I am going to leave it till next week.
Why not.
It would be too long an article for one week plus it means I can do this at a more leisurely pace. I hope you don't mind.
I could give you a taster of the results, but then I would have to kill you, so I won't. Don't get too excited though - the photographs are dire, however the processing is interesting . . . stay tuned film-fans . . .
As usual, take care, thanks for reading and God bless.

Sometimes You Eat The Bear (Anatomy Of A Printing Session)

Har Har me Hearties - what a week it has been.
Mog's new-found talking ability has proved itself rather amusing, particularly now that some of the lads have been teachin' him to swear. Not only that, but he's become a gifted impersonator; and I would say now aboard the Good Shippe FB, you cannot reliably rely on anything you hear, especially when you can't see the person that is talking.
We also had a rather amusing time with Mr.Sheephouse.
I don't know where he got them from, but my second mate got a haul of very small bear costumes. I presume these were intended for some sort of children's activity in the Russias (as that is where they were bound before he purloined them), anyway, a bit of snipping and sewing and before you know it we had a cat-sized bear outfit.
It was très amusing to see Mog wandering around like a small cub pretending to be tough.
It was even more amusing when we locked him down below with Sheephouse in his room of dark arcanery. Oh yes, much was the swearing that came out o' that room with us all gathered outside the door sniggering away.
To be truthful, it was almost impossible to tell who's voice was who's.
I think Mog learned more swear words that day than he would in a whole month o' bein' below decks.
That cat, he's got Sheephouse down to a T.

***

I love printing photographs - I've said it before and I'll say it again - it is entirely half of my photographic life and one which these days seems to be largely ignored by the majority of photographers . . .but that's another soapbox.

It was Sunday and it was sleety/rainy. I had been wanting to take my Wista out, but the thought of those lovely silk-lined bellows in the rain isn't very appealing . .neither is the thick dew of condensation on a groundglass on days like this .  . so printing it was. I started at 11AM and finished at 3.30PM with a 20 minute break for lunch.

Negatives were all made with my nice old 50mm Elmar, however there were a couple of variables. Firstly the camera. My initial bunch were made on the IIIf which I sent back. The second lot were made on an M2 which I haven't sent back (though it does have a 1/15th sneeze). What I haven't seen written before is that the film gates of both cameras are different! The IIIf is exactly 37mm x 24mm; the M2 is the standard 36mm x 24mm . . . strange but true. This caused some confusion halfway through the session, but it was sorted quickly. The other variables were film (Ilford Delta 400 and Kodak TMX 400) and dilutions of Kodak HC 110 developer (Dilutions G and B). The final variable if you can call it that was a Leitz FISON lens hood I bought to protect the Elmar (more about this in a later blog).

Anyway, as the title of this blog implies . . sometimes things go right, and sometimes they don't. Today I had a number of bad things happen, but managed to make some prints I am more than happy with. I count it a good session if I can make 6 to 8 prints, and if say 3 of those are useable as proper archive prints then all the better.

The Maw Of Hell

Could Have Done With A Tidy-Up

The DeVere just fits

Wet Area (and sensibly placed 'Dry' cabinet)

Emergency Supplies.
The trays are on the floor to catch drips from the current printing session's drying prints - normally they aren't there.

Prints Drying.

As you can see, my darkroom is extremely primitive. It is an old butler's cupboard under a stair - it does have quite a high ceiling at one side, and does have the advantage of a stone flagged floor, which is fine for spillages of chemicals and also keeps beer at near perfect pub temperature! 

My enlarger is a DeVere 504 Dichromat - you can see it mounted on an old kitchen cabinet which is on its side - I have to print on my knees - I call it supplication to the Gods Of Printing.

All my wet processing is done in trays on newspapers on those shelves to the right - they are 9 inches deep - just enough for a tray.

The old hifi cabinet underneath is my dry area - all paper is stored in there, and there is an old Restem paper safe on a shelf too.

Yes that is a wine rack! The green towel is my door jamb for when I am processing LF film - basically it is a towel rolled up, with cable ties holding it in a roll and goes up against a large gap under the cupboard door.

There's no running water, so prints get popped into my Paterson washer until the end.

The prints are hanging from an old indoors washing line that came with the house!

They say that necessity is the mother of invention - in my case it has been poverty - I scrimped this lot together over years and would love to have a 'proper' darkroom with all mod cons.

For all its primitiveness, I can print to exhibition standards, and I am not bumming myself up there. I care about my prints.

They are carefully made and of a high quality. The only thing I lack is a dry mounting press ( and seriously if you have one you don't want, let me know!)
Actually, I am sure that any of us making prints the old-fashioned way these days, and willing to invest the time and money into learning printing, are good enough at what we do to make them to exhibition standard.

The lens was a nice old (Pentax made) 50mm f2.8 Durst Neonon, which I kept at f5.6 for the entire session. Chemicals were Kodak Polymax developer, Kodak stop bath, and home-made plain fix, which I used as a double bath. I have run out of selenium or else I would have toned them. They were washed for a couple of hours in my creaky old Paterson Archival Washer. Seeing as the plain fix is essentially an alkali fix, washing is a lot shorter than for acid fixers, and also I don't need to use hypo-clear.
Oh and I don't split grade print - I never found it of use to my practice, but again that's just me.

I was going to use my old favourite of Ilford Galerie, however because half the negatives were developed in HC 110 Dilution G and are (because of the fact that the Elmar is ancient and uncoated) very low in contrast, I chose to use some Adox Vario Classic fibre-based which I had kicking around. It is a very nice paper - the only things I don't like about it are its gloss, which isn't as rich as it could be, and the fact it will cockle around the edges when air-dried.

To be honest I am not a fan of resin-coated paper - I don't know, there's just something about the image quality, which, to be honest doesn't quite have the sharpness of a good fibre print. Anyway, that's just me. Fibre takes longer to print and is more fussy of correct fixing, but I feel the effort to be worth it.

Anyway, time to strap your helmet on and join me in the cavalcade of laughter, triumph and tears!

First up is an image I rather like - it is hard to tell what is going on, but you know the place is 'Open'.

Being none too familiar with the Adox paper I felt it best to sacrifice a sheet to the God Of Test Strips. I don't always make them, but sometimes, and especially when you are using a new camera/film/developer combo, they are handy as they help to get your eye use to the paper's properties and how your negative will look printed . . often never how you imagine it to be! I can usually get about 12 smaller strips out of one sheet of 8x10" paper - I know the general idea is to make a large strip, but to be honest, I would rather preserve the paper, so small strips it is.
The long lamented greatest paper ever was Forte, and they actually provided you with some test strips pre-cut, which I thought was very nice. But alas nobody thinks like that anymore, so you have to waste a sheet . .

Bear in mind that a box of 100 sheets of fibre-based  8x10" paper is approximately £70+ these days and you have 70p down the swanny just like that . . .

I set up my easel, got the image placement right, focused, stopped down and made a test. This was developed, and I came to my decision of exposure time. I then checked the focus again, and made the exposure. (By the way, if you made the test strip in say four second segments, you need to expose your print in four second segments, not for the whole exposure all at once. This is because the intermittency effect will come in and effectively give you a greater exposure and hence a darker print.)

Oh and I am assuming from this that you might have made some prints, and therefore don't need the very basics going over . . .

Also I will pre-empt everything by saying ignore the ripple effect on the scans! This is because the prints have dried cockled (anyone got a dry mounting press they don't want???) and I have scanned them warts and all. Secondly, I wanted to include little thumbnails of test strips, but Blogger software is hopeless when it comes to aligning pictures, so I gave up.

Anyway, warts and all, here it is.

Print 1 - Adox Vario Classic - Grade 4.
Leica IIIf, 50mm Uncoated Elmar, Ilford Delta 400, HC110 Dilution G.

I like the print I made here - it works and is a bit mysterious and dreamy . . though, judging it afterward, there were two white speck marks, so I obviously didn't clean the negative as well as I should have. Also, notice the presence of the bear in the way that the margin on the right hand side is smaller than the left . . yep, forgot to check that one!

Selenium would bring up the blacks beautifully, so I should get some more . . nearly £25 a bottle though . . . but at least if you do decide you want to tone a print, you can go back, soak the print and follow a correct toning sequence . . very handy.

Anyway, onwards, I corrected the margin, gave the bear a kick and continued.

Whilst I had the same sheet of negatives out, I thought I would print the following. I made a test, and judged the exposure.

Print 2 - Adox Vario Classic - Grade 3.
Leica IIIf, 50mm Uncoated Elmar, Ilford Delta 400, HC110 Dilution G.

And as you can see, the result is shite. The first of the day's mistakes. Contrast is poor,  exposure is poor, and here's the kicker, I must have not focused properly on the easel, because the image appears to be out of focus too. Och well, another 70p down the drain . . . .

A brief aside into focus finders:

I have 3! A Scoponet, a basic Peak and a Magnasight.

The Peak is my favourite, however it had fungus when I bought it, so I had to dismantle it, which necessitated a fair bit of plastic gouging . . and of course you can't reassemble from there, so it works of a fashion. Because I can't set it permanently, I have to constantly re-adjust, and the bear loves a good twiddle . . .

The Scoponet isn't a patch on the optical clarity of the Peak, but does in an emergency (I used it for years).

The Magnasight I bought new from the States and have used it about twice, because I just couldn't get on with it .  . anyone want to buy it??

Back to the Session . . .

I was annoyed, and that isn't a good frame of mind to be in for printing, so I prepped my next negative. By the way, blowers? Anti-static guns? Nope, I run a 35mm negative through the fleshy parts of thumb and where it buts up against the index finger, or sometimes I'll run it between my index and middle finger.

It works.

I use a cobbled glass carrier in the DeVere (using Meopta 6x9 glass carriers taped to the DeVere's lower glass carrier), and any dust that falls on there gets swiped off with the back of my hand. I used to use an anti-static brush, but I find this method a whole lot more less problematical.

I made a test strip and decided to up the contrast a bit and judged the exposure roughly based on that. The Adox paper offers remarkably similar exposure times for different grades, which is a nice quality.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't see that the bear was getting ready to lend a helping hand again.

Disaster Strikes!
Print 3 - Adox Vario Classic - Grade 3.
Leica IIIf, 50mm Uncoated Elmar, Ilford Delta 400, HC110 Dilution G.

Nice print, nice contrast, but look - it is squint! My excuse (another one) - my ancient and battered Beard easel has little alumininium strips which act as stops for the paper you are about to expose. Unfortunately, the design is such that paper can slip underneath them all too easily, which is what happened here. Moral of the story, check and double check everything . . even something as basic as fitting a piece of paper into an easel.

Being annoyed by the presence of the bear, I looked at the print again and decided that my contrast wasn't enough, so I went the whole hog and dialled in a mighty 200 units of Magenta (effectively a Grade 4+) and made another print.

Print 4 - Adox Vario Classic - Grade 4+ (200 Magenta)
Leica IIIf, 50mm Uncoated Elmar, Ilford Delta 400, HC110 Dilution G.

Ah, that's better.

I asked the bear to leave quietly and he did.

Calm returned and I could get on with my worship.

My next negative showed me the importance of ignoring what a scanned negative looks like. Scanning negatives is a nasty habit I have got into in recent years, and you know what - it is a hopeless way of judging what you have made. In my scan, the verticals are converging (slightly, but enough to make me think I shouldn't bother printing the negative - "Wot's that Doctor? Ee's got Convergin Verticals? Wot's 'at mean then? My poor son!"). However, I liked the image and thought I could correct the verticals by using tilt on the DeVere's focus stage, so I got a surprise when I looked at it on the baseboard and realised the verticals are correct and straight . . just the way I composed it!

Print 5 - Adox Vario Classic - Grade 3
Leica M2, 50mm Uncoated Elmar, FISON Hood, Kodak TMY 400, HC110 Dilution B.

The picture is of a hoarding outside a newsagents and is, how shall I say, a little 'Welcome to Dundee' for the V&A.

Yes that grey stuff is I don't know what, but it's pretty ghastly!

It is very typical of this lovely city of mine - on one hand you have knowledge and study and the arts, and on the other you have sublime ignorance and stupidity. Pretty much like any city really.

David' Bailey's picture of Twiggy is a great one, made all the merrier by a smear of 'stuff'.

The print turned out well I felt. The negative brought in the two extra variuables of the FISON hood and Dilution B.

Had I had more time, I would have done some selective bleaching of the white stuff with Ferricyanide, but I didn't . . maybe later.

I was feeling pretty good now - printing is supposed to be a pleasurable activity, but I fully understand how people can become frustrated and disillusioned.

Like anything good, effort is required, along with care and checking at every stage.

Feeling semi-triumphant and conscious of the clock, I thought I would round everything off with a strange image.

It was strange when I took it - I gambled on the camera exposure but got it right and the negative is dense enough for me to print at pretty much any tonality, which is great!

Print 6 - Adox Vario Classic - Grade 3.
Leica M2, 50mm Uncoated Elmar, FISON Hood, Kodak TMY 400, HC110 Dilution B. 

I printed this at Grade 3 just to boost the lower contrast of the Elmar, and I feel with the print I misjudged it and gave it a tad too much exposure. I would prefer a lighter tonality . . maybe next time.

It isn't a fine print, but it is a starting point.

And that's pretty much it actually. I would say it was a semi-successful session. Very enjoyable all the same.

The prints were washed for a couple of hours and then pegged back to back for an overnight air dry. I then flatten them between some heavy books and file away the ones I like best.

One thing . . on my last print, despite my feeling of triumph, the bear must have accompanied me whilst I was out photographing, as there is a small black mark at the top - obviously a bit of material like a fibre. This must be in the camera (it was . . I found it!), as it is black on the print and thus in permanence on the negative. Fortunately I have a Swann and Morton Number 15 scalpel blade and managed to gently 'knife' it out whilst the print was still wet. Yes it leaves a mark in the gloss finish, but you can sometimes touch that up carefully with spotting dye. At the end of the day, I have a few prints I am happy with and have filed away.

Sometimes you eat him. Sometimes, he eats you.

Printing is a dying craft (unfortunately) - I will continue to enjoy it until they no longer manufacture paper . . and I don't know what I'll do then . .

As usual, thanks for reading and God bless.

***

If you are interested, some of my personal recommendations for self-teaching materials:

I have read rather a lot of printing books over the years, and whilst I have enjoyed the likes of the more modern favourites like Rudman's 'Master Printing Course', and Ephraum's 'Creative Elements', I am going to come out and say the flat-out best printing book around is Ansel Adam's 'The Print'. It repays repeated reading. It is a masterwork, and it will teach you more than you really need to know. I will follow this with the late-lamented Barry Thornton's two books, 'Edge Of Darkness' and 'Elements'. 'Elements' has been out of print for a number of years but is now available as an e-book.
John Blakemore's 'Black and White Photography Workshop' is a masterclass in all aspects of monochrome photography with particular attention applied to the aesthetic aspects of print-making you don't find anywhere else.
My final recommendations were published by Ralph Gibson's Lustrum Press. They are called 'Darkroom', and 'Darkroom 2'. Both essential reading for the sheer breadth of practice by the contributing printers.
Ground yourself in these and you will be producing prints you are proud of in no time at all.
I would also be remiss not to mention Joseph McKenzie and his redoubtable technician Sandy, who taught me photography and printing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in the 1980's . . . you can't put a price on such a great grounding.