Today’s featured photo of the day! Obscure Darkroom Magic

Here is today’s featured photo. For the interim of the latter part of the holiday season, I am featuring an extra special event of featuring a reflection of my favorite part of being in the darkroom…making art out of a regular photo! Here is a set of photos of Saint James Church, sometimes referred to as Monk’s Castle in Lemont, IL. Splendid rendition shots!! Date – 1981.

A truly magnificent work of art!

The original run of the masterpiece before it was redone in the darkroom again by making a new negative of it. This is the shot I used with photo chemicals and toners to posterize the shot.

This is the original shot with no embellishments. The film was a much better grain that was available at the time in the 35 mm variety. The film recommended use of the red # 25 filter, and during the daytime on a sunny day required a tripod for exposing a shot that was bright enough to render a proper exposure at ISO 32 (ASA at the time). Note that because the shot is an original B&W print developed with warm-tone emulsion that the blacks are not true monochrome, which would have yielded much different results when it came to the art of posterization.

Photo taken with a tripod mounted Nikon EM-through a Nikon 26 mm lens, filter=polarizer and red # 25, Aperture=22 f/stop, shutter-speed 1/15th second, loaded with Kodak Panatomic-X Black & White 135 Negative Film ISO (ASA) 32 (extremely fine grain) processed with D-76 Processing Chemicals, and a fiber paper print using the Kodak Professional “warm-tone” enlargement paper developed with Kodak Dektol chemicals onto a 3½x5″ matte-gloss print.

☼TIP:  A lot of the chemicals used in photography in the 80’s are seriously not available to the public for sale anymore due to two sets of rules (1. volatile organic compound or VOC’s and 2. clean water acts imposed by the governments of most countries for obvious reasons. ☼

See you tomorrow with another fine darkroom magic photograph!!
© 2019 Versatileer

PHOTO OF THE DAY