ALT-PROCESS & DIGITAL IMAGES

One of the challenges I faced recently was taking digital photos and wanting to print them in Black & White. I could never get a printer that printed BW prints that did not look like digital images. I wanted that real darkroom, hand printed look with dark blacks and rich midtones..

After doing some research, I decided to try using digital negatives and printing in a small darkroom I set up in my bathroom. I set up the traditional developer/stop bath/fixer/wash trays that I had used many years ago in the darkroom when working with film. Only this time, I was contact printing using overhead film vs traditional film. Placing the digital negative in a contact frame, similar to how you would print a contact sheet and using BW RC Pearl paper, BW RC SemiGloss Paper and 300gm 100% Cotton Paper, I was able to create some gorgeous, sharp BW prints that looked like they were shot with a film camera! Taking the process one step further, I brushed some Arches watercolor paper with chemical, exposed the paper to UV light and using the same digital negative was able to produce a beautiful Cyanotype of the same image. More to come...