How many of you print your photographs, digital or film in a darkroom or with inkjet? We take great care in creating our images but perhaps the most neglected part of photography is the most important part of the process, the final print. We get excited by the anticipation of seeing our images that the wait is often too exciting for digital photographers to bear and they look at their screen to see the instant result. I have done it myself, I couldn't wait to see the image I had shot using my Lydith on my Nikon D700 for the first time. I'm not ashamed to admit it either. The anticipation was too much, I chimped and to be honest I did a hell of a lot of chimping that afternoon. You can't do that with film, but in my humble opinion that's one advantage film has that we don't always appreciate. The wait.
The big attraction of film photography for me personally is the anticipation of getting that film developed and seeing the images I spent my time on. I get my colour film developed by the good folks at my local Max Spielmann Photo Store, they also scan my negatives and put them on compact disc for me so I can print them at home. I develop my own B&W film at home and for convenience scan them with a small 5 megapixel scanner, but sometimes I will dig out my DSLR and scan them with that. For many of us this is where the process comes to an end. We put our images on our computers, never to see the light of day again. This is a shame as many fantastic images will never get the plaudits they deserve.
I have spent this year learning to shoot and develop black and white film and had I left my images on a hard drive or the negatives tucked away safely in a binder, would I have been able to say I had completed my education? I had to move to the next step of my journey and see my black and white images on gloss photo paper I got from a local well known discount retailer for £1. I know the purists will be shrieking Blasphemy! and calling me a heretic, but I don't have access to a darkroom for wet printing so I have to use what I have available. At the moment I have a HP Envy 4520 inkjet printer and have taken advantage of their ink replacement program. For £2 per month I get to print 50 images and HP send me some new ink cartridges when I am close to running out. It has saved me a tidy sum over the last few years.
It pays to take your time when printing, be it in a darkroom or using an inkjet and I spent a bit of time making sure I had my images looking decent before printing. Just as in a darkroom I made test prints and fine tuned my images before printing, this saved me time and allowed me to print around 50 images with no problems. I also had an album ready to put them into once the ink had dried. I am quite happy with the results of my digital printing and hope to take the next step and print images in a darkroom at some point. I have to save up first as that equipment is a tad expensive, but hopefully I will be able to take the next step on my photography journey and learn the art of darkroom wizardry in the not too distant future.
Here are a few images of my prints and there are more on my Flickr album Prints They are not the full set though, they are in my album that I enjoy looking through and remembering the fun I had learning new skills during the Corona Virus Pandemic of 2020. It kept cabin fever at bay for a while.
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