SILVER GELATINE FILM & PRINT PROCESSING
Bespoke Workshop
Numbers limited to 1 person due to size of darkroom
The 1 to 1 tutorial can be tailored to suit your requirements either at the weekend or over several weeks as 3 hour sessions.
It can be an introduction for complete beginners or for those wishing to refresh their memory of working with silver gelatine films and papers.
You can choose to work with either a 35mm or medium format camera to create your images. These will be available for you to use. If you need additional support to understand the functions of the camera then this can be included. You will also learn the principals of processing your black and white films in the darkroom.
Safe chemical handling and dark room practices will be reviewed and an induction given into the use of a darkroom enlarger. Once your film is ready, you will make a contact print on paper, from which you will select your best images to print onto multi- grade papers.
Once you feel confident with the fundamentals of the process you will be able to print a number of images and experiment with some darkroom techniques to lighten or darken areas of an image by hand or to hand tint or touch up images.
It is also possible to work from digital files to produce larger silver halide film that can then be used in the darkroom. This approach requires the negative to be the same size as the paper by contact printing the two together under the light of an enlarger. Therefore bypassing the need to use the enlarger to scale up the work. To undertake this you will need to learn how to calibrate your negative for Silver Gelatine for this approach to work.
In the early part of my carreer, I specialised in printing my work as very large scale silver gelatine prints that would be finished entirely by hand for exhibitions and integral to some installation work. I can offer guidance to do this work.
Cost
£95 + VAT per 3 hr induction session
£250 + VAT per day for mentoring and technical support
Darkroom chemicals are included for developing but you will need to purchase your own 35mm or 120mm film and multi grade papers - guidance on this is available on request.
Good quality second hand black & white darkroom enlargers are available for purchase from me at a reasonable cost, for you to set up your own darkroom.
Dates
By arrangement, please contact me for further information.
Process
Silver Salts are the main constituent of silver gelatine films and papers. The light sensitive silver salts combined with either bromide or chloride, is coated onto a thin layer of gelatine above a paper or plastic substrate. Once exposed to light a chemical reaction darkens the silver coating to produce an image.
History
The light sensitive nature of silver salts was know for many centuries before the invention of photography. However, it wasn't until 1839 that Sir John Frederick William Herschel, an English polymath, invented the chemical mix "hypo" which could be used to arrest the light sensitivity of silver salts and therefore make an image permanent. He shared his discovery with his friend William Henry Fox Talbot, who had also been experimenting with chemical procedures, to capture camera obscura images.
Talbot announced his discovery in 1840 and called his initial process 'Photogenic Drawings'. This was followed soon after by his Calotype process, the direct ancestor of modern photography; the negative / positive method that is universally used today to reproduce images. Fox Talbot is known as the 'father of photography'.
