Black and White Darkroom Holiday

1 session of 4 Hours

Arrive for check in and meet at An Portan in Dunquin for Tea and Coffee at 4.00 pm.

We’ll spend the first session visiting the local beach and rocky shoreline around Dunquin, an opportunity to relax and take in the wondrous surroundings that are to be found at the very edge of The Dingle Peninsula.

Starting at the very beginning with the film camera controls, we discover how to use the aperture, shutter and meter to obtain a correct exposure. If you can bring along a digital camera with manual settings, you’ll find this a great way to learn everything about obtaining correct exposure.

Following a short break, you’ll load a film in your camera and begin exposing your first film.

2 sessions of 4 hours

9.00 am. We’ll get familiar with the processing equipment and procedures before practising the film loading process and then doing it for real with the film we took yesterday evening. Once the films are processed and drying in the cabinet, we’ll take a break until the next session.

With the first film dry, the negatives will show us how well we’ve managed to expose the first film and we can address any issues before we head out into the fabulous landscape and expose another roll of film. During this session we also have the opportunity to try out and experiment with filters in B&W photography. Last task of the day is to develop and process these rolls of film, ready for printing tomorrow.

2 sessions of 4 hours

9.00 am With all the films dry, cut and inserted into negative sleeves, we’ll discuss the overall printing process before we each print a contact sheet, which provides us with a miniature of each photo to use as a guide for choosing which of our negatives to print full size. We’ll then begin printing our chosen negatives full size on to photographic paper using an enlarger and darkroom chemistry.

Following a mid day break we’ll take a look and experiment with some more advanced printing techniques that will allow us to alter the contrast and local density of our finished prints.

1 session 3 ½ hours

10.00 am.– 1.30 pm.

We’ll explore the various methods of how to process a negative into a digital image, including a full demonstration using a flatbed scanner and some examples of the software that is available.

The workshop closes with a full recap, where everyone’s welcome to ask any questions. We can discuss the various ways and methods for processing and printing film with limited space or resources and moving on to setting up your own darkroom.