groping in the dark

First Printing

I've made the first black & white prints from my darkroom, woohoo!

Nothing exciting yet, just the contact sheets from all of the film I developed over the weekend. I've still got four or five rolls left to develop, so I'll probably tackle that before I get into more printing.

Plus I need to absorb some new lessons:

• Chemistry has a shelf life - This was another "well, duhh!" moment for me. When I opened the jug of paper developer I had mixed the week before, I could see that it had turned yellow-brown from oxidization. Luckily, I had mixed another full bottle and that developer was fine (no room for air in the jug). I'm getting some smaller storage jugs to supplement the gallon jugs I have now, resulting in fewer half-full jugs.
• Heavier glass for my homemade contact board - The first couple of contact sheets came out all blurry. I thought I was being clever by cobbling something together from an 11x14 piece of glass from a cheapo Walmart picture frame, a hunk of foam board and duct tape. Actually, it saved me about $30, but I had to press the glass down while exposing the print in order to get good contact between the negatives and the paper.
• A better way to wash prints - The tub of water with a running water hose is a very inefficient way to wash the prints. Not only is it a total waste of water, but I also don't really trust the results. I've seen somewhere that you can build your own print washer from an aquarium, but I can't seem to find that now. I'll post something when I have a solution.

Here's the darkroom as it exists now:

The sink is to the left, out of the frame. The darkroom doubles as my computer hub room for now; that's what all those wires are against the wall. The left side of the table and the out-of-frame sink constitute the wet side of the darkroom, while the right side of the table and the desk to the right constitue the dry side. As you can see, there are plenty of improvements to make!