Six Hours in the Darkroom

After my Darkroom Introduction Workshop and a three-hour session on my own, I felt confident enough to book a whole day (six hours) in the Darkroom at Rapid Eye in London. I felt that the three hours I did last time weren't enough to get into the flow, produce prints and start experimenting. So I was really curious to see how much I could learn and get done during six hours.

I started by setting up my darkroom, enlarger and my workspace. Luckily, I wrote down a checklist with all the things I needed to do to get everything up and running. This really helped me and everything was set up in no time.

To get into the flow of printing, I decided to print one of the photos from my last session again. I had already figured out the exposure time and colour correction, so that was quite straightforward. I wanted to have a few more prints of this photo to give away as a gift.

After that, I started printing more frames from Margate. I started experimenting with dodging, different exposure times, different apertures and framing. Again, the Rapid Eye Team was super helpful and answered all of my questions I had along the way.

After roughly four hours, I had done two contact sheets and seven final prints. All on 10x12 paper. I was delighted at how much I learned and how much I got done. With so many nice prints done, it was time for a quick lunch and scanning.

The last one and a half hours I got a bit more experimental. I wanted to print a full 6x4.5 negative, including the film borders. After a bit of experimenting and again with the help of the Rapid Eye Team, I got this neat full border print.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out! Here is the scan of the final print.

Now, the biggest question, would I book another six-hour session in the Darkroom? The answer is 100% yes! It was so much more relaxing. I had so much more time for learning and experimenting, and also I got done way more than in a three-hour session.

What's next? I have planned a trip to North Wales very soon, and I can't wait to darkroom print the photos I'll take there,

Thanks for reading!

Cheers, Jan
- @jan.onfilm

My Previous Darkroom Sessions

My First-Ever Colour Darkroom Prints

I recently did a hand printing workshop where I created my first-ever colour contact sheets and darkroom prints.

jan.onfilmJan Gottweiss

Another Day in the Darkroom

After my hand printing darkroom workshop, it was time to put the learned techniques into practise and create some more prints.

jan.onfilmJan Gottweiss