On Tuesday 11th May, I took part in a fiber based printing workshop. I decided to do this workshop as I wanted to get back in the darkroom and saw this as an opportunity to do it alongside other people. It was really nice to be back in there and to be making prints again.
As usual we made the test strips to get the correct exposure times. I began by doing my exposure for 5 seconds for each second, but this appeared to be way to long and the test strip was almost completely black. So I had to do it for 2 seconds, which worked a lot better but it was still very dark towards the end of the strip. I took another test strip and exposed it for 3 seconds, which seemed to be just right.
So i got the borders done all right and then exposed the full image for 3 seconds.Once again, the same with the studio, it felt so weird being back and working with my hands again, but it all came back to me so quickly which was really reassuring and nice. It also reminded me just how much I love working in the darkroom, the quiet dark space where I am able to make and have a finished product.
Martin then showed us how to do a selenium wash which helped to up the contrast a bit on the images and made them look a bit more exciting.