This is not likely to be useful to anyone beyond a tiny core group of eccentrics: film photographers are a tiny minority to begin with, and I understand most Y/N (young/new) film photographers have their negatives scanned and then go from there. So nobody does darkroom printing any more, for an n>zero value of "nobody." But I thought I'd mention it just in case it's suggestive of anything else that might be helpful.
As a photographic craft enthusiast > photography teacher > custom printer > darkroom expert (I was on the staff of, and then Editor of, and then a columnist for, several darkroom magazines back in the day), I observed over the years that people's personal temperament determined, as much as anything, their preferred working styles. To funnel the many types into two bottles, let's say one type liked to work loose, freewheeling, and fast, and the other liked careful control and craftmanship.
So I decided I would periodically force myself to do opposite exercises that covered each, so as not to get cornered into one set of skills at the expense of the other.
The first exercise was that every now and then I'd print some number of negatives right after picking them from the contact sheet, working fast. That is, no workprint stage. The workprint stage was to print images on anything from 4x5" to 8x10" resin-coated paper (paper didn't come in 4x5" sizes; that's an 8x10" sheet cut into four) and then using those to choose what to make a fine print of. Workprints could also be used for editing and sequencing. So for the exercise I'd just pick a few negs right off the contact sheet and give myself two pieces of good fiber-base [sic] paper to make the print. I printed enough that I could get in the ballpark without a test strip. The first whole-sheet print was my best guess; the second one had to contain any corrections as to density or contrast, and any burning or dodging—just winging it. I wouldn't stop to contemplate in between. One print, look at it for a minute or two, second print. Then that was that and I'd move on. That was the fast-and-loose exercise. I got surprisingly good at it.
And by the way, that's about how professional custom printers at labs worked, although they might use sophisticated tools, such as light meters under the enlarger, to get to the guide print stage. The lab wouldn't make money if they took half an hour and ten sheets of paper to make one print.
For the second exercise, the care and control side of the coin, I'd print more like Charlie Pratt. Here's Ralph Steiner from the foreword to the book Charles Pratt: Photographs (please note that the cover photograph is a picture of bramble!):
He [Charlie] came one evening fifteen years ago to a photographic discussion group which I sort of ran. We were looking at a couple of dozen rather ratty photographs, which had been brought in by a pleasant week-end photographer, who boasted: 'I knocked off these prints in just one evening.'
I was horrified by the prints, by the idea of two dozen in an evening, but mostly by the sacrilegious 'knocked off.' I was afraid of what might slip off my sometimes acid tongue, so I said: 'Charlie, why don't you tell us how you go about making a print.'
Rather shyly he told the group that he would take half to a full day to make from four to six rather good proof enlargements from one or at the most two negatives. He told the group that he would mount them all, and stand them up on a railing in his workroom, and would look at them for a month or so. Then he exploded into his normal, earth-shaking laugh, and said: 'I don't mean that I stand in front of them for a month, I leave them up for a month, stop to look at them some time each day to see how I feel. One day an idea will hit me how I want to print them, and I'll really go to work. Then I'll spend time on them.' That was Charlie.
For these prints, I resolved to take as much time, and "spend" as much in materials, as I needed to make the absolute best print I could make. Sometimes it would take a Pratt month and dozens of sheets of expensive paper. I might start by spending a whole evening making a great print, but then think about it for a week, perhaps deciding on a different paper or toning, and then do it all over again. Once I spent two successive days on one 8x10" print—not a total of 16 hours, but perhaps 10. I would just work until I had it exactly right.
Both methods eventually sort of collapsed into the middle. The "fast printing" style made me more decisive about getting down to the result, more businesslike; and the "slow printing" exercise encouraged me to spend more time and paper if and when a negative demanded it. Learn how to work fast and then slow down when you need to.
But the thing I liked about this, as I say, is that I didn't feel like I was merely being a slave to whatever my temperament happened to be, whether breezy, loose, and not very particular, or slow, methodical, and careful. Both methods had lessons to teach me; it was good to be familiar with both ways of working. And by the way, if temperament leads you strongly to one end or the other of this (or any?) spectrum, would that make it more valuable or less valuable to consciously practice and learn from the opposite? I suspect the former. We can always gain from learning in ways that don't come naturally to us.
For the record, I think I lean toward "slow, methodical and careful," but I know that to some extent I encompass both extremes in my own temperament. I lack patience and I want my working methods to be easy and efficient; but I'm also fastidious and contemplative and I like things to be right.
I did a parallel pair of exercises with shooting, too. But that's another "Friday."
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
Luke: "All of these processes apply to digital. I make a fairly quick pass through the latest dump from the camera, but I also periodically go through older photos and sets to see what I missed. I usually find a couple that make me think 'I can do better.' These, I spend some time with, and maybe try varying approaches."
Ira Sacher: "I was Arnold Newman's printer/assistant for several years. No test strips, etc. Arnold liked a full 14x17 print that we looked at wet and to which we made corrections. We moved slowly. He was a delight to print for, calm, meticulous...."
Terry Letton: "Apropos of absolutely nothing you’ve written of here but anyway. I took a roll of Kodak C-41 process black-and-white film to a local chain drugstore for processing, as I have a good scanner if there is something I actually want a good print of. The theory is that the volume guy should have the freshest chemistry. Well, I discovered the fly in the ointment. Reading the claim ticket, buried in the finest print (font borrowed from unsubscribe buttons), 'you will not get your actual negatives only a CD.' I’m actually hoping there is nothing any good on that roll."
Glenn Allenspach: "Mike, this post should be useful for anyone who prints, film or digital. In my own darkroom days, I worked like your fast and loose type, mostly because I hated pouring out the chemicals and pouring them back again. With my computer and printer, I feel much freer to run one or a few work prints and mull them over a while before getting into the weeds. It also saves me from wasting time on a weak image if I get tired of the work print, or opens one up that I didn’t feel too strongly about at first."
Mike Fewster: "An aside. From my cynical and age-influenced observation, I've also noted that the young film-camera crowd have their images scanned and then digitally post processed and digitally printed. Can anyone see any point in this? Further, in Japan I saw lots of youngies toting venerable film cameras but I saw few shots being taken with them. A fashion accessory or a film renaissance?
"I'm with Mike on the craftsmanship of the print. I can see a niche but significant future market foe analog images. Shot with film and darkroom printed. Such images will retain a craftsmanship provenance that distinguishes them from digital/manipulated/AI images. I can see, well, I hope I can see, a different market emerging for these images. In time, I think older analog printed images will have a higher value as well."
Mark B: "Hooray for Film Friday! I’m more in the slow methodical camp, though every once in a great while I make a particularly easy-to-print negative that needs only a test strip and a final print. Paying attention to making a good negative definitely pays off when I try to coax a print from that negative. I think Saint Ansel wrote something along those lines."
Steve Deutsche: "I find that these approaches apply to digital printing as well—even the 'watch the print for a month' technique."
David Brown: "I can certainly identify with this post. In the 1980s, I was employed by a security company managing their darkroom and hundreds of cameras in almost 100 locations. The cameras shot 100-foot rolls of 35mm film. Most of the work was 'test shots' made by me, and 'suspicion shots' taken by bank tellers and nervous jewelry salesmen. There was the occasional actual 'incident.' Processing tens of thousands of feet of film and making hundreds or thousands of prints, I became very efficient in the darkroom. The quick and dirty method. In my own work, I strove to be methodical and take as much time and material as needed when making prints.
"Somewhere over the years, the two merged. I work fast, but I make proof prints, test strips, evaluate changes, experiment, and often wait a bit before making a final print. In teaching, I tried to split the difference as well. Ironically, there was usually not enough time.
"Photography is not for the faint of wallet! Perhaps my being married to a painter helped me with this. I know the cost of canvas, paint, brushes, etc., and most photo materials pale in comparison."
David Aiken: "I've just started reading Stephen Shore's Modern Instances. His introduction does not address artist statements but it does address why and how some photographers have declined to talk about their intentions and work. Those statements seem more to the point to me. Since Lee Friedlander's comment about how he worked has been discussed, Shore's account of Friedlander's response to the question, 'What were you thinking when you took this picture?' at a slide presentation of his American Monuments series at Cooper Union might be interesting. Shore quotes Friedlander as saying 'As I recall, I was hungry.'"
Mike replies: That's good, albeit more Winograndesque than Friedlanderian. (The two were great friends.) I've always liked that attitude, which Elliott Erwitt has in spades as well—the "they're just snaps" attitude, as a counterbalance to artspeak, pretension, and opacity. Curiously, there's depth and profundity in it as well.
I'm really new to the darkroom. I've barely got a reliable grip on the details of the whole process, from choosing a negative to work with, getting the enlarger focussed, figuring out the exposure time and whatever dodging or burning might be required, if it needs a contrast filter, to the development process, and ending up looking at the print to try to figure out what changes I should make for the next one. I'm happy now to get a nicely exposed print. I can usually recognize it's as good as it's going to get with my current skill level. I'm still making stupid mistakes, like forgetting to switch the lens from wide open to focus, to stopped down for printing.
I'm currently somewhere between those two processes you mentioned. I'm trying to get a grip on looking at the focussed image on the back of a sheet of exposed paper (I've lots of paper with poor images) and knowing about what the exposure time should be. Let's just say it's a work in progress. If I've no idea I'll do a test strip, then try a print, and probably tweak the time for the next one, and hopefully end up with something close enough I can fine tune it. One or two more, and it's typically as good as it's going to get. A few where I like the photo for whatever reason, but it's a difficult negative, I might go through a dozen iterations. If after an evening of printing I get 4 prints that I'm willing to show someone else, I'm pretty pleased.
A few times I've made mental notes to come back and work with the negative a bit more as my skill develops. I can't see myself doing the Charlie process. Partly it's not yet knowing what could be done to make a better print, since I can't visualize how it would look with different paper or developer. Partly it's not yet having the skills to do a tricky yet subtle dodge or burn.
The web url leads to a blog post with more details about the darkroom experience so far.
Posted by: Keith | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 01:56 PM
I find that these approaches apply to digital printing as well - even the 'watch the print for a month' technique.
Posted by: Steve Deutsch | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 02:23 PM
Hooray for Film Friday! I’m more in the slow methodical camp, though every once in a great while I make a particularly easy-to-print negative that needs only a test strip and a final print. Paying attention to making a good negative definitely pays off when I try to coax a print from that negative. I think Saint Ansel wrote something along those lines.
Posted by: Mark B | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 02:51 PM
An aside. From my cynical and age influenced observation, I've also noted that the young, film camera crowd have their images scanned and then digitally post processed and digitally printed. Can anyone see any point in this?
Further, in Japan I saw lots of youngies toting venerable film cameras but I saw few shots being taken with them. A fashion accessory or a film renaissance?
I'm with Mike on the craftsmanship of the print. I can see a niche but significant future market foe analog images. Shot with film and darkroom printed. Such images will retain a craftsmanship provenance that distinguishes them from digital;/manipulated/AI images. I can see, well, I hope I can see, a different market emerging for these images. In time, I think older analog printed images will have a higher value as well.
Posted by: Mike Fewster | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 04:21 PM
The "Pratt method" is kinda like what I do now, using both the Epson SC P600 (stock) and Epson 3880 Stylus Pro (modified) (for carbon inks - monochrome).
Whatever images I think might be worth printing, I'll "knock off" a few prints with Quad Tone RIP on the P600, on 8.5" x ll" good enough and cheap Chinese paper. Let them age for a few days. Repeat with the selected one(s) on the 3880, using the same paper. If I'm happy with the result, I'll commit to a print on $5 a sheet 17" x 19" archival rag paper (that's four 8.5" x 11" sheets).
Posted by: MikeR | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 04:35 PM
Mike, this post should be useful for anyone who prints, film or digital. In my own darkroom days, I worked like your fast and loose type, mostly because I hated pouring out the chemicals and pouring them back again. With my computer and printer, I feel much freer to run one or a few work prints and mull them over a while before getting into the weeds. It also saves me from wasting time on a weak image if I get tired of the work print, or opens one up that I didn’t feel too strongly about at first.
Posted by: Glenn Allenspach | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 05:19 PM
This reminds me of a story my father told me - on more than one occasion. A commercial photographer his entire life, the darkroom moved into our garage when I was about 5 years old. Before that it was always attached to his "studio" in Boston.
Typical printing was for publicity distribution, so it might be (25) 5x7's from #3a and (50) 5x7's from #17a. I always remember 250 8x10 boxes of Ilford Multigrade paper in the mid-late 1980's darkroom. He would burn through those and his glassined negatives would fill the empty boxes.
During a busy period one year, he brought in a young guy/recent graduate from photo school, to do some printing for him. He left him with the print orders and the negatives. Many batches of prints as described above - might take the guy almost all day to get through it. Hundreds of prints, but in quantities.
My father returns home mid-afternoon after a couple of assignments ready to package and deliver the prints. The guy somewhat proudly shows him some of his test prints for review. Nothing was done. My father was in disbelief.
The commercial photographer very much needed and expected hundreds of "good" prints to be done! "This guy thinks he's Ansel Adams! I don't need a masterpiece - I need 50 good 5x7s for the client to distribute to newspapers today!" But he probably had not managed expectations and made sure they were on the same page regarding quality, quantity and speed - the spectrum you describe above.
I watched this same scenario play out with my father often over the years. He was self-taught. His self-esteem and confidence stunted in many ways. He always assumed that a person who was "educated" to do these things would just be better. So when he hired photographers to cover assignments for him, he just assumed they could and would do all the things he does. He didn't feel qualified to tell them how to shoot. He might have said, "Work the people. Attention to details. Shoot enough, but not too much. Don't be obnoxious. Be unobtrusive. Be likable. You have to shoot like you print - fast, efficient and good. Not looking for masterpieces here." He didn't give himself enough credit - that's a difficult balancing act! Impossible for most photographer personalities.
He was often dumbfounded with the photographic results and the client feedback. And that was the one thing that would probably spike his confidence, if only briefly!
Posted by: JOHN B GILLOOLY | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 05:46 PM
I can remember a few times leaving a darkroom session with nothing, having thrown everything in the trash can.
Posted by: Paul Bass | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 08:26 PM
Apropos of absolutely nothing you’ve written of here but anyway. I took a roll of Kodak C-41 process black and white film to a local chain drugstore for processing as I have a good scanner if there is something I actually want a good print . The theory is that the volume guy should have the freshest chemistry. Well I discovered the fly in the ointment. Reading the claim ticket buried in the finest print ( font borrowed from unsubscribe buttons) ‘ you will not get your actual negatives only a CD’
I’m actually hoping there is nothing any good on that roll
Posted by: Terry Letton | Sunday, 19 January 2025 at 10:03 PM
I was Arnold Newmans printer/assistant for several years.
No test strips, etc. Arnold liked a full 14x17 print that we looked at wet and made corrections. We moved slowly.
He was a delight to print for, calm , meticulous……
Posted by: Ira Sacher | Monday, 20 January 2025 at 05:05 AM
All of these processes apply to digital.
I make a fairly quick pass through the latest dump from the camera, but I also periodically go through older photos and sets to see what I missed. I usually find a couple that make me think "I can do better". These, I spend some time with, and maybe try varying approaches.
Posted by: Luke | Monday, 20 January 2025 at 08:58 AM
I work with a professor of photography at Washington University in St. Louis. You might be encouraged but not surprised to hear that they do extensively teach film developing and printing. The curriculum naturally extends to digital. I was interested to observe that they have a digital printer with advanced B&W inks that will print a 5x7 B&W negative that is then printed in analog chemistry.
Posted by: Jack Mac | Monday, 20 January 2025 at 12:19 PM
Thanks for this Mike, I love Film Fridays! But I want to add a little footnote to what you say about the difference between darkroom printing and working from scanned negatives. A nitpicking comment is that a digitally processed scanned image is still “film photography”, in the fundamental sense that the image is captured on film. At least to my eye, it also looks a lot more lika a traditional analog picture than like the capture of a digital camera. It is also worth taking a more realistic view of what darkroom work was really like for those of us who were not master printers and who had other demands on our time. I suspect that I am not alone in having thousands of negatives that I have never seen, except as, precisely, negatives, or at best on contact sheets. Even for a slouch like me, printing was hard work, reserved for special occasions, while using the camera was quick and fun. Using a digital camera and a VALOI easy35, last week I went through about ten rolls of never printed negatives from 1975. After a few hours of work I had seen full size versions of every frame, taken my pick and published 68 of them to an Adobe Portfolio for interested persons to look at. As the pictures are of a very memorable public event (a several weeks long “occupation” of a square in Gothenburg, Sweden, to prevent the building a multistorey garage) there turned out to be quite a few such persons. No works of art but great fun, and I am quite sure that everyone of them looks much better on my iPad than they would have looked as handprinted by me at the time. I am quite excited to see what else will turn up as I go through these binders …
Posted by: Staffan Carlshamre | Monday, 20 January 2025 at 02:54 PM
Interesting post on printing. I saw a lot of changes during my career as a newspaper photographer, because I worked on smaller newspapers I was responsible for printing the pictures I made in the course of the day. In the early part of my career before colour or digital photography became the norm all of my black and white prints were made in the darkroom. At the first newspaper I worked at after I processed my film I made contact prints the editor would mark the pictures he wanted printed with an orange grease marker. Then I would print the pictures to size, in columns. I made black and white prints with special high-contrast print paper from Agfa (grade 6) through an 85-dot line screen this was part of a vacuum easel under a regular enlarger, the exposures were long and the print paper was fed through a Kodak Ekatamatic processor, the prints were then run through a waxer and pasted directly on to the paste-up page.
The next paper I worked for, a small daily in Brampton Ontario had a different method they had me make traditional black and white prints in the darkroom with Ilford multi-contrast RC print paper, these prints were then sent off to the composing room to be made into PMT prints that were then made ready for the press. I developed all my own film with stand stainless steel tanks and chemistry, however, I made no contact sheets, once the film was dried the editor would look at the negatives using a loupe over a light box and then take a paper punch and make a small nick out of the edge of the film indicating which frame he wanted printed, often I would go over the choices with the editor and suggest my choices. I had to be fast when printing because sometimes there was breaking news and there were constant deadlines every day for different sections of the paper. Plus the newspaper was under pressure to keep costs down, so I couldn't waste time and paper making multiple prints. I don't ever recall making test strips. I would just eyeball the negative and usually, I would come pretty close to the correct exposure time. Once I did this multiple times day in and day out I got pretty fast and efficient.
At the third and final newspaper, I worked at we started shooting colour film by the mid-1990s and we used Polaroid Sprint scanners to digitize our negatives.
In contrast to my rushed work at the newspaper around the mid-1980s, I started doing my own personal fine art photography on my time off using a 4x5 large format view camera and black and white film. I was inspired by the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. I had set up a darkroom at home, this way I could be more thoughtful in my printing and take my time. I wanted to learn about the fine craft of darkroom printing so I read all of Ansel Adams' technical books. I tried to slow down and take my time in my approach to my photography which was far different than the speed-orientated daily work I was doing at the daily newspaper. For my personal work, I used the best fibre-based print paper I could find and my prints were selenium toned, I also printed using a cold light head on my enlarger, I used an electronic metronome for a timer and I also never used test strips, and after a while, I got to know the density of my negatives plus the developing time and temperature of the chemistry. If I was making an 8x10 print the enlarger head was always set at the same place as I rarely cropped my pictures because I always shot my images full frame.
Looking back I think I made some pretty good prints but a lot were absolute crap and nothing like some of the great photographers were making or the expert printer Charlie Pratt that you mentioned in your post. I regret not taking any workshops, but there was not much available where I lived in Kelowna, B.C. Anyway, that is my reflection on darkroom printing.
Posted by: Gary Nylander | Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 12:30 AM
Staffan C.;
I must thank you for copying the negatives digitally and then posting the prints onto your portfolio page. What a treat to look at those photos of a peaceful demonstration, with both young and numerous older people attending the event. (The young people in the photos are now older than some of the "older" people in the photos.)
The photos came out pretty well, even the nighttime ones. I imagine the nighttime negatives were much easier to print digitally, rather than in a darkroom!
I hope you are able to find some other interesting photos in your old negatives.
Posted by: Dave | Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 09:47 AM
As someone who releases not fully edited, or not well edited images, in the initial excitement (to my regret) and then takes days, weeks, months to rectify- yeah, I appreciate both versions.
I used to think much of what Winogrand said was merely for effect, only to realize he was right all along...
Posted by: Stan B. | Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 10:43 AM
In 1981, having gone broke a s a yearbook portrait photographer, I took a job as the b/w printer in a custom lab. Even then, at 25, I knew how to make a good b/w print. Or so I thought. There was a big difference between making a print for yourself, and finishing the assignment for a demanding professional who was going to be there to pick it up at 4:30pm. At that lab the techs dealt directly with the customers... the learning curve was steep to say the least. Yet I climbed it; the secret to that work was to make the correct decision (on how to improve the test print) quickly. Test strip-full-sheet-dodged&burned final. I learned to print color the same way (although that took longer).
After three years there I was hired into a small division of Eastman Kodak, where my little photo department. worked the same way. So I spent the next twenty-plus years practicing that small part of the craft, along with all of the many other aspects of an industrial photographer's job.
All that time, up to literally today, I have made my own prints of my own photographs. I don't bother with work prints, the decision-making process learned so long ago is still in place; and now as then, practice improves the eye. I've rarely felt the need to go back and re-print an image, but it can and does happen. Making photographs is what I do, and printmaking is the vital final step in my method.. This may be an archaic practice in an age of scans'n'screens, but I'll stick with it for as long as I can. After forty-plus years, I'm nowhere near the expressive limits of this medium.
Posted by: Mark Sampson | Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 02:26 PM