HP5 v Pixels ..

This photograph is one of my own personal favourites. I took it at an Air Show in Manchester around 1980. Last night I was scrolling through 'My Archive' - as it's grandly called on the Mac - and it occurred to me that, if I were to put one of the pictures from it online every day, it would still take over three years just to show you all of my favourite black and white shots! That fact I found amazing! And that's without all my colour shots - the travel stuff, the slide library! Man, when I had my little Olympus XA camera I just shot and shot and shot! And those were the days when you had to buy film, and spend money on darkroom materials (Not to mention the time to process and print everything!) I have nothing against digital photography - seeing as I use it all the time! - but it does make me feel good knowing I was a photographer when the art needed a certain amount of skill, knowledge and know-how! Smug gloating over...   

I've seen the light..

Never used film? Never printed your own photographs? Then this blog's for you! It's for you if you think a test-strip is a trial nudist session. It's for you if the mention of red lights and enlargers makes you smirk and titter, and you think developer is something to give you a bigger bust! In short, it's for you if you've never worked in a darkroom! And all because of this fab photograph I found in my archive the other day. It's the make-shift darkroom I used to set up in the kitchen when I moved into a flat with my dad in 1977. Black plastic sheets over the window and the enlarger and tray of dev on the worktop, squeezed between the cooker and the sink, just beside the ironing board, the kettle and my work flask! Now those were the days! But don't knock it! It's from this 'darkroom' that I printed all the photographs I sold to the Eccles Journal when I was 17, which led to me getting my first job on Messenger Group Newspapers in '78. This is where it all started, folks! Now switch the bloody light off, I'm working...