Darkroom Diaries - March 1st 2025

Photography is a fine balance between spending time in the field, looking for new amazing shots - and spending time underground in the dark, printing those shots.

Something new for this darkroom session - among the freshly developed rolls of film I've also got the experimental Harman Phoenix 200. In medium format, shot over the Christmas break on Mamiya RB67 around Loch Kathrine in Scotland.

When scanned it would generally give off a lot of warm colors, often going into magenta. But I was genuinely curious what it's going to look like when printed in a darkroom. First contact sheets indeed came up quite warm. After further adjustments I've got some blue tints, greens, while still having plenty of yellow and orange. For sure, an interesting emulsion.

After some tests I've printed this shot of a castle on a Loch Achray, which clearly wants to remain anonymous and not marked on the maps. The final print is on glossy paper, 12x16", and is available in the shop.

This was also the only good print worthy of the shop, since a disaster struck shortly after.

A bulb went out on the enlarger I've been using all day.

Good news that the place always got a technician ready to help you out with any kind of technical difficulty. Today was no different - bulb was replaced in no time at all. But then I've noticed the test prints started coming out very, very yellow.

Apparently, bulbs are slowly changing color temperature over the course of its life. Since blue light translates into yellow prints, I'd say the bulb starts quite blue, and gradually warms up, getting quite yellow just before going out. In terms of color wheel adjustments on the color enlarger, we're talking tens of color units. It sounds like a lot, and it very much is. At some point of my test printing, the corrections for yellow and magenta were around a 100 mark.

Another unfortunate consequence of this learning is that nothing is really permanent. I'm documenting the color settings for each print, but that doesn't matter much outside of a concrete darkroom session. Next time you're printing, even if on the same enlarger, the bulb temperature would've shifted one way or another.

But at least I've got to print lots and lots of colorful sheep. Originally shot on the Isle of Raasay, on Kodak Gold film with a Hasselblad.

Print big or go home!