I took this at the zoo. The sea lion was playing with the kids and they were reaching and jumping begging it for attention. Just after I took this picture, the sea lion playfully snapped at the kids through the plexiglass, and they all happily screamed. I hope the picture makes you smile.
My grandpa gave me an olympus om-2n, and a family friend was offloading his entire darkroom, so I ended up with all the stuff for free. Since then I’ve been blundering my way along, and after a year or so I feel like I’m starting to get some control. I’m not normally an artistic person, but I really enjoy how methodical you need to be with the analog process. If you enjoy this, I will post a few more. I had a manic episode a couple months ago, and produced some pictures that I think are ok.
Damn, that’s a very unique composition, the spiral leads my eyes in and they’re locked on to the hands. Pretty cool stuff.
Have you experimented with dodging and burning yet? Printing the images and experimenting with exposure was absolutely my favorite part of working in a darkroom.
Thanks very much :) I was so excited when I saw the negative with the spiral come out of the fixer. Most of my rolls are “eh”, but sometimes a frame will scream “print me now!”.
I have done a little dodging and burning, but so far only in the service of “correcting” things. This negative was really challenging to print. I had to burn in the background and dodge the sea lion pretty hard to be able to get detail in both. I will probably revisit it down the road as there is a lot more detail in the sea lion than you can see here. Ultimately, I decided that the strength of the spiral was more important to me than getting full detail in the sea lion, but that decision was motivated by my skill deficit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aw how lucky are you, getting that darkroom gear! I also got lucky and was gifted an old pressman camera I can’t wait to get cleaned up…I don’t have a darkroom yet though. Someday. Would love to see more shots! What kind of film/paper did you use?
I feel really grateful to receive all the gear from people. I get a lot of satisfaction from putting all kinds of old tools back to work.
I’m using HP5+ and ilford multigrade pearl paper right now. I believe this shot was pushed to 800 asa, which I was doing a lot at the time as I often struggled with finding enough light in the winter/spring. I was using Arista EDU for a while because it’s cheap. I don’t think it’s as tolerant of pushing in terms of grain size, but I bet a lot of that was due to I experience on my part.
Yes, turning trash to treasure is one of my hobbies too. Nice work on getting this tricky backlit shot! I’m a fan of the film grain look. Have you experimented with ilford’s fiber paper? This would also look interesting as a cyanotype.
I haven’t tried fiber paper yet, mostly because $$$, and I feel like I’m not at the point where I’m satisfied enough with my prints to make any “archival” yet.
I do love cyanotypes. I’ve done them with digital pictures before by getting transparencies from Kinkos and then using a UV lamp to burn them onto the emulsion. I’m not sure how I’d get there from a 35mm negative though. I have a negative scanner, but its very low quality and puts a nasty gradient on one side of everything, so I only use it for digitizing old family slides.
Is it possible to contact print a cyanotype off an enlarged darkroom print?
I feel you, photography is so expensive!! To make a cyanotype from a negative you can still use an enlarger, but you have to switch out the bulb for a cold uv one. I thought this print would look really nice as a cyanotype. It’s also easier to dodge/burn with a cyanotype because the exposures are so much longer. I don’t know if it’s possible to contact print off of another print, but I would guess not because the rc paper is pretty thick.
