Silver Gelatin Prints make lovely gifts

I was thinking today about the satisfaction I’ve had recently in being able to produce silver gelatin prints in the darkroom for gifts.

Whilst I appreciate that it’s a very personal thing to decide what photos you would like on display in your home, I’ve only gifted a couple of photos so far, to people who I know would love them and would definitely have them on display.

The first silver gelatin print I gifted was to my friend Clive, who went away with me last year to Singapore when we watched the Formula 1 Grand Prix there.

It was an amazing trip away and I managed to take a nice photo of Singapore using the zoom lens on my Pentax K1000 camera and Kentmere 100 black and white film.

I really liked the photo when I got it developed and practiced printing it on silver gelatin paper at my second black and white photography course at Varndean college. Here is a scanned copy of the print I did using a 3.5 Contrast Filter:

Clive saw the photo and really liked it. He had recently moved houses and said how lovely that picture would look framed up in his home office.

I therefore mounted it using white card and framed it in a nice black frame and gave it to Clive and he was really happy with it. It also felt like a nice moving in gift to his new home.

The second photo I gifted was to my husband today as it’s his birthday.

He is actually quite a difficult person to buy gifts for since he never really wants anything and if he does, he just buys it himself.

In the past I’ve taken him away on holiday for his birthday but due to current work commitments, he cannot take any time off work in the near future so I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this for him at the moment.

In fact, I think I felt more sad for him than he did at going to work today.

A couple of weeks ago, I had been practicing portrait shots with him using my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera and some Rollei RPX 400 black and white film.

I particularly liked a picture I’d taken of him cuddling our dog so decided yesterday when I was in the darkroom to make an enlargement of it.

Early this morning before he got up for work, I placed the photo on the mantel piece in our living room for him to see.

I’m pleased to say he really loved it and left for work with a big smile on his face. That was a great feeling for me knowing how happy I’d made him and I knew that photo meant more to him than anything material I could have bought.

I attached a copy of the photo in the blog heading but here it is again:

Brighton Community Darkroom

In some of my previous blog posts I talked about taking a darkroom photography course at Varndean College in Brighton where I had an introduction to Black and White photography and developing my own contact sheets and prints etc.

I took the initial course in the Summer 2018 and ended up enjoying it so much that I signed up to do the course again in September 2018.

After I finished the second course at the beginning of November, I wasn’t quite sure whether I would want to do any more developing of my own prints and wondered if I could settle for digital prints instead.

However, by the end of December I realised I was really missing the darkroom process and the buzz I got from developing my own black and white prints.

I knew in Brighton that there is a community darkroom that I could join so I could continue developing my own prints without having to do any further courses at Vardean college and I wouldn’t have the initial expense of having to set up my own darkroom at home.

Also, the college only caters for 35mm film photography and I have recently been working more with medium format photography (120mm negatives) so require an enlarger that will work with both 35mm and 120mm negatives.

Thankfully the community darkroom was able to meet these requirements with their enlarger.

The community darkroom I joined currently has availability for new members. Here is a link to their website: http://coachwerks.org/the-darkroom/

They use a Durst DA 900 Enlarger and have the equipment I require to develop my own prints such as the developing chemicals, a place to hang prints to dry, masking frames etc., although you need to bring your own photographic paper.

They charge £25 per month for use of the darkroom which is open 24 hours and I plan to use it at least 1-2 times per week for a minimum of 4 hours at a time so for me, I think its great value for money.

I look forward to blogging further about using the darkroom over the next few months and how I’m finding it.