Josie McCann's Photography: Black & White Printing Process

After having our introduction to the darkroom and materials etc, we printed our negatives out onto a contact sheet;

After setting up our sections, i.e fixing our lens, putting our chosen negative into the view-finder and created our border sizes etc, we then focused our image and started creating tests on sections of photographic paper to make final choices for our A4 prints.

I first done a test of a light exposure scale of 5 seconds. (5, 10, 15, 20, 25)

I used an opened lens on a G2 scale;

This then tested this scale of 5 seconds again but used f8 and G5;

After choosing the tone I wanted to work with I then then made a test shot of this;

I now started to look at contrast, density and tone. I made varied choices and tests to see the results before making a final decision...

I used G0 and G2 on this for ten seconds each;

I decided I wanted the background darker, more tone in the squares and less exposure in the highlights on the bottom right of the image and object. I now tested the same G. scales but with different times.

I made an A4 print of this to show the image before making further alterations..