This past semester I had the opportunity to take a black and white photography class at NMSU. It’s their introduction class as far as photography goes and I really enjoyed it! For those of you that have never developed film or printed in a dark room it’s a pretty neat experience and I wanted to share this with you.

This will be a  two part post on how you make a print – starting with with developing film:)

First of all you have to go shoot!

Then you have to develop your film. The first step of developing your film is to load your film. This must happen in complete darkness: IE why there’s not a photo. You start by opening your films canister (we used a basic can opener) and very gently load it onto the reel for that particular size of film. Next you place it inside the size of metal container specific to how many rolls of film you’re developing and place the lid on top.

Next you make the developer solution. 1 part water to 1 part developer (and with the container I was using 4 oz’s of each if you want to get technical). You take the temperature of the water before mixing and index the water temp with the film brand/type to find the correct developing time.

Then you pour the developer into the metal container and agitate every 30 seconds for  5 seconds during the time distinguished by the chart.

Then you’ll rinse it and pour the developer down the drain (it’s diluted). Next you introduce the other chemicals individually.

After all these chemicals you place your reels and developed film into the washer for a final wash.

Then you dunk the film in photo flo and squeegee as you remove it from the reel.

Please realize that the information expressed on how to develop in this setting is strictly for this setting. There are different versions of chemicals and they take different environmental conditions to work properly (time). The steps should be the same though:)

Be sure to tune in later this week for the second part of “Getting the Print” to see the final product!

As always thanks for reading!

-Lauren