Problem Solved....

This past weekend it was pretty cold... too cold to consider going out shooting with large format cameras.  View cameras are delicate to operate, and the fine controls are just not properly accessed with gloves on.  Considering that many of the parts are metal, handling them with bare hands, in cold weather becomes an issue.  I think that over the years my fingers have been close to frozen far too many times and as a result they are now very sensitive to cold.  Fifteen or twenty minutes of handling a metal camera and my fingers are hurting.  Even worse than the cold, is when they begin to thaw and warm up.  I experience a throbbing pain that shoots from my fingers up into my elbows and shoulders.  Needless to say, it is not very comfortable... so when the temperature drops down below -10C I tend to avoid trying to get out with my cameras.

This past weekend it was much colder than that so I retreated to my darkroom and attempted to print some of my negatives.  I had been having a lot of issues with contrast and acheiving a reasonable tonal scale in my prints.  It was very discouraging and over the holiday break it seemed as though mostly I just wasted a lot of time, and a lot of costly photo paper.  This weekend I was determined to find a solution for my printing woes....

I started by mixing up a fresh batch of developer.  I used an old kit for 130 developer, but disposed of the packet of developing agent, Glycin, that had obviously gone bad and replaced it with some fresh chemical.  This time the mixed developer solution had sort of a urine color, rather than the look of my previous batch, that resembled strong, black coffee.  I was optimistic that this would at least partially resolve my contrast issues.  In addition to this I realized that my enlarger had been set on the high lamp intensity, so I dialed this down to the low setting.  I don't know if it's my imagination but it seems as though the longer exposures, with a weaker lamp, enhanced the effect of the contrast filters.  In any event the print sessions of this weekend were much more acceptable.  Though these are just work prints, that were not subjected to the sort of attention that exhibition prints might receive, I was generally much happier with the results.  I printed five of my negatives, mostly from Utah, and also helped Margarit to print one of her negatives from the recent weekend day trip out to the abandoned Monastery....

These are all snapshots of the work prints in a water rinse tray, following toning with selenium.  Four of my negatives were images taken with my view camera down in Utah.  The fifth is an image taken on a hike up to Wilcox Pass in Jasper.  The last is Margarit's print from a medium format negative...