CARBON COPY

So I've progressed the work for Impact a bit and got a branch printed, the next thing is to use these prints as 'negatives' and print through them to make the inverted image. I can do this so easily in Photoshop and post it here, as you see;

- but actually doing it in the darkroom requires long slow exposures and followed by a hard days slog over a chemical tray.  I find myself avoiding getting in there to do it. This has not been helped by the glorious spring sunshine, the vigour of growth in the vegie garden seems so much more urgent.

Much darkroom work is hard yakka.  It is a portal into a parallel world where  things are strangely different. White paper turns black and blackness is evidence of light.   You have to learn differently and in the darkroom, you do some things by feel. You get comfortable working this way and skilled over time. There is the thrill of seeing the print bloom in the developer bath, followed by the tedium of fixing and washing for hours and hours after what was originally a very short exposure time.

The work is always an interplay of constructive planning and chance.