It looks much nicer in the dark.

Some additional light proofing with some old velvet curtains.

Spidery shadows. They love the red light.

Safe.

A few results from an evening printing photograms

Having finally got electricity supplied and installed a shelf for the trays, I was last night ready to get printing in my shed. Once my bike was evicted, along with saws, spades and trowels that might injure/impale me in the dark it worked as a great little darkroom, if a little hot! I was able to pick up an enlarger pretty cheap on twitter (thanks Gareth!) and bodged some light proofing together using insulation tape, some old velvet curtains from my Nan, and some wood I found on the street. My safe light is my bike light (a little too bright, truth be told) and there are plenty of spiders crawling about, but I’m happy to be in a darkroom once more for the first time since uni (5 years ago!).

I was so keen to get printing I went ahead despite not having any black and white negatives about. Instead I had a play with colour slides, and created photograms using items selected from around the house…

I now want to use it to process my pinhole photography, and to process black and white negatives from my film cameras. I haven’t photographed in black and white for a while now, so it will be a real change for me.