MorseBlog

Another box of old paper. This time the remnants of a 30" x 10m roll of Ilfobrom in an old moldy box. Very risky but the seller said it was at least in its original bag. My interest was to gain experience in making very large prints. Rolls of photo paper 30" wide are expensive however and my experiments may result in me not liking making large prints. Plus where to put them! My interest in large prints goes back to a business my grandfather Cushman Morse had in Phoenix Arizona. It was called Photables. It involved large black and white prints used to make coffee tables. He had a local carpenter make the tables and he took the photos, usually custom, that he then placed under a sheet of glass for the table top. He started with a 4x5 negative and printed it in his own darkroom. My father recalls he developed it using sponges as the trays would have been huge. He had one tray however for fixing which he had custom made out of stainless steel. I recall growing up and visiting m...

One of the things that attracted me to film photography was as a means of connecting to my brother who worked long in photography and for whom it was a great enthusiasm. He spent some time as a commercial photographer. After his passing some 20 years ago my father and I came into possession of most of his photographs and negatives. Some of these I assembled into a Blurb book. Many others I continue to use as subjects in my dark room for printing. A number of my favorites were ones taken during a backpacking trip to the Maze District in Canyonlands Utah we took together. This trip is outlined in a prior posting on this blog. Among some I printed as 12x16 for a project are the following. Maze Cottonwood 12x16 Maze Juniper 12x16 Maze Waterfall portrait Maze Waterfall landscape My brother took a combination of black and white and color slides on his Hasselblad. The one below I thought would make a good addition to the set. however this one is a color slide. In genera...

I picked up some more old paper. Based on my recent project to allow bigger enlargements I was on the look-out for 16x20 paper. Good fortune came my way in the form of Negra Portrene. An unopened box of 16x20 paper. The seller said he tried some from another box and it was good. The price was right and so I took a gamble. There is not much information on this paper on the web. Most references are from Spanish language sites as the paper was made in Barcelona. The Negra company went out of business perhaps as far back as the 70s. Some research revealed a stock certificate. And other research indicates it started in 1956. Negra Industrial Stock Certificate I found and translated with the help of Google the following footnote in a book on Spanish archaeology photographs. The Spanish industries tried to compete that had little entity and disappeared soon, and unable to sustain the harsh foreign competition.  In 1893 a manufacturer of photographic products in  ...