The small project to organize my photo archives suddenly became an all time consuming obsession: for the last month and a half every day from 7am till 10pm I have been working on images from my photo archives. And the result ? over 150 new images have been added to my website. I felt like a gold prospector: I had to pan through the tons of dirt ? terabytes of my photo archives ? to find some gold flakes and occasionally a nugget or two ? images worth showing to you. Some days produced no results at all despite all that hard work, but the lucky days gave me real gems when all hope had been already lost.

150 new images and they are only form the last three years. In front of me is another mountain of dirt: six more years of digital images archives and 30,000 transparences from film days. I wish I have more time…

Most of the last month I spent building desks, stands, shelves, etc for my new printmaking studio. After cutting and joining 11 4×8 plywood sheets, a bunch of 2×4 studs and 1×4 lumber the result is here.

It has three main areas: desk for scanning and printing, printmaking desk and canvas stretching table.

My new “small” printer is 17″ Epson 4900 sits on a stand built just for “him” alone. Old Epson 2400 is hiding below, I’m planning to convert it to use with Piezography Carbon inks. Epson 4990 scanner to scan 4×5 and 8×10 negatives and Nikon 4000ED for 35mm slides. The monitor is quite small but this just a “satellite” digital darkroom station, my main 12TB-24GB-i7-3 monitors computer muscle is in my upstairs office.

From left to right: canvas and paper rolls storage, dry mounting press, UV light source for contact printing, light box, print drying rack, print coating table, prints storage and a fridge full of film.

UV light source with all 16 black lights in action.

My workhourse 44″ HP Z3100 printer with built-in spectrophotomer. And canvas stretching machine with air compressor on a table which is folded for now. Usually it sits in a center of the room.

Well, the construction phase is over. It is time to produce some new images and prints.

Library of Congress has and extensive collection of photographic prints and transparencies and some of them are even digitized. It means that you can download a hefty TIF file and examine image in all details. Like this image of Weasel Tail made by famous Edward Curtis in 1900, 112 year ago. You can truly appreciate how Edward Curtis skillfully played with only available light, use of background, quality of lens and large format camera hundred years ago.

But looking at the original image I can’t help but see it in through Photoshop lens: I see it as a RAW file which needs to be processed, I see it as a negative which needs to be printed. It is the same feeling when try to look outside through the dirty window: you do want to clean it to sparkle and enjoy the view. I could not resist to make some quick adjustments to the original file – see before and after below.

This and other images you can find in Library of Congress are in public domain and there no restrictions on publication and other forms of distribution.

After:

Before:

The darkroom is finally finished! I installed all drainage today playing lego with different pvc pipes, marvel adapters, u-traps, y-connectors, etc – you name it. The gigantic 20×24″ print washer still needs some caulking for the glass dividers, but it is minor. Finally I can use my Jobo CPE-2 to develop some film.

Now when the wet side (room) is finished I can apply my construction “momentum” to design and build the dry side (room): finish UV light source, build print dryer, print coating desk, computer desk and stands for assortment of Epson prints I have.

I spent most of the week designing and building UV light source for contact printing. That will be on “dry side” of my darkroom – actually it will be in a completely different room than wet side (sinks) of my darkroom. The masterpiece of any dry side of any darkroom is a photo enlarger. I decided to skip this piece of equipment and replace this part of the process with contact printing. But you need a pretty big UV light source to make contact prints. Here it is: it is able to handle 20×24″ prints in 24×28″ contact frame. It has 16 24″ fluorescent tubes – black lights, 8 electronic ballasts, 8 fans to cool the lights and 2 power supplies to power the fans. It is almost done. I just need to add cover and build a stand for it.

Also, I almost finished gigantic vertical cascade print washer for 20×24″ prints. And of course it is made of plywood and covered with epoxy paint. I just need to hook up drainage for the washer.

Oh, and I built a new computer. Yes, digital darkroom is well and alive and it even got better. With 24GB of memory and SDD drive my Photoshop is chewing gigabyte images much faster now.

New darkroom sinks have finally made their way from the garage where they have been made into the darkroom. Two sinks will hold five 20×24″ trays (actually the trays are 24×28″). I wanted to make even larger prints but due to the small space of the room 20×24″ prints will be the limit. I’m making a cascading print washer now. And now it’s time to construct a masterpiece out of PVC pipes for the drainage.

Time flies… I have been working on my new darkroom but have not posted any images of my work. Most of the time I spent building two sinks out of plywood and then sanding and coating them with several layers of shellac, polyurethane paint and epoxy resin. 2 gallons of paint and 3 gallons of epoxy resin. Then I installed a ceiling in my space. And 2 pieces of 4×8′ plywood to mount all equipment. I had a lot of fun soldering copper pipes for water plumbing: there were a lot of corners, t-joints and thread adapters. Oh, and filters for cold and hot water are also in place. And on a top of that Wing Lynch electronic water temperature controller I bought on eBay. And exhaust ventilation all finished too. Everything is ready for the sinks!

It is nice and clean now: I painted the walls and the door. Plus new floor is black and white now – pretty appropriate since I’ll be doing mostly black and white prints here. Oh, and I started laying out ventilation. It is time to build darkroom sinks!

New drywall is in place, patched and ready for the prime coat. Also, I installed a new lightproof door (it did not get into the picture).

Framing for the drywall is ready and all electric wiring is finished.