Film photography - a walk through

I love printing and when it comes to black and white, a carefully printed portrait from the darkroom, on matt fibre-based multigrade paper from Ilford is my favourite look. The soft rich tonality has to be seen in person to be felt. Unfortunately it can’t be accurately rendered on a screen, but hopefully it is good enough to give an idea. Put simply a proper black and white, silver-gelatin print is something which will stand the test of time and which you will be proud to display for many years to come. It’s not an ‘analog trend’ they just do look beautiful.

So let’s start with the camera, I usually shoot medium format 6x4.5cm black and white film which gives large negatives with great resolution. I do it with this retro beauty: The Mamiya 645. It’s a beautiful piece of engineering.

I develop all my films in-house which gives me more control in terms of contrast and detail. Then I scan the negatives in order to produce an online gallery for your perusal.

Once you’ve made your selection I head into the darkroom and begin the printing process.

This routinely takes numerous test prints to get me within the parameters of a good overall exposure. I usually opt for ‘split-grade’ printing, where you expose multiple times at different contrast settings in order to achieve soft detailed shadows and highlights combined with strong blacks. I like to dry mine in the kitchen as they’re best viewed in natural light. The one on the left is good..

Then it’s time for a cup of tea whilst I enjoy looking at the final result and contemplate which type of frame to recommend. You then get to check how it will look before you commit.

I hope this gives you an idea of the craft involved and the timeless quality of the end result.