Astbury's Adventures in Photography

I recently attended a two day training course at Stills Centre for Photography in Edinburgh for their training course " An Introduction to the Platinum/Palladium Print ". This is what would now be termed an alternative process (i.e. chemical not digital) although it works well as a hybrid process to contact print from digital negatives. As someone who is familiar with the Cyanotype process I already had some of the basic concepts around contact printing with a digital negative but the Pt/Pd print process is more involved and more exacting with chemicals which are much more expensive so it seemed like a good idea to get some training first. scan of Pt Pd print Day one of the training was very hands on and based in the darkroom, cutting and coating papers, learning some drop ratios, exposing to UV and then working through the various chemical baths to get finished prints. To prepare for this we had submitted image files in advance of the course start date, which had ...

I'm looking forward to a house move next year and part of my planning is to have a dedicated darkroom so it was with some interest that I came across a recommendation for this book, Build Your Own Home Darkroom, by Lista Duren and Billy McDonald, published by Curtin & London, 1982. Build Your Own Home Darkroom - front cover Build Your Own Home Darkroom - back cover Although an old book it seems there's plenty of second hand copies to be found, I picked up mine via Abe Books and paid just £2.49 including postage, so good value for money. Improvised darkroom My current setup is to use our utility room, this gives a little bit of work space and has a sink. However it means I have to tidy up and make space before I can start. It's far from light tight, not so critical for UV based processes but I still need to block up the window if I want consistent UV exposures. Once I've done my printing I then have to pack everything away again and return the r...