MorseBlog

Recently I have been focused on getting back into the darkroom and making prints again. I have also been improving my darkroom printing process by reviewing the process and adopting more techniques used by master printers. As a part of this I have made a series of three prints from a trip to Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales last October. Whernside is the tallest point in Yorkshire and part of the Three Peaks. It is a good strenuous walk to the top with wonderful views. When I visited I came away with 3 printable photos taken with my Fuji GSW 690 medium format camera. I used Ilford FP4+ which is my go-to black and white film. The three images featured are... Ribblehead Distant Whernside Greensell Tarn Force Gill The day was cold, blustery and spitting snow at the top. Challenging conditions to be sure. The light was shifting with the clouds and this lead to some of the drama present in the photos. The process of printing these photos has been detailed in previous blog posts. ...

Its been some time since I have done some FB prints in 12x16" size. I like bigger print sizes but with FB there is always the drying and flattening problem. I wrote an article about a solution for 8x10" prints which I use regularly and like the results. I scaled this up not too long ago for 12x16" and my initial trial resulted in some damage to the paper in the corner. This mimicked a comment made by a reader when he had tried to scale up a similar solution. Though the damage and distortion was limited it did discourage me. I let the problem roll around in my head until I decided to do more prints. I had an unopened box of Ilford MGIV FB Classic and I wanted to try it. I decided I could reduce the paper tension by clamping the edges with less force. This worked flawlessly. Flat prints with no damage. I will give a complete report in a later post. For this I chose some photos my brother took while we were on a backpacking trip in the Maze district in Canyonlands in Ut...