Hodgepodge 25/365 - B&W Photography

Back in the 1990s I took some classes at our local college in black & white darkroom photography. I very much enjoyed learning to "see" in monochrome. I also enjoyed messing around with chemicals: the slow patience required as you sloshed the paper in the developer, waiting for an image to come up, then the wait while it fixed—all to see if you got the right exposure with the enlarger and if you'd chosen the best contrast of paper (though I confess I tended to use variable-contrast [VC] paper—but never resin-coated [RC] "paper").

I do love silver gelatin prints. I should probably frame some of the ones I have matted—now sitting in boxes, the prints protected by sheets of archival tissue paper; put them up. Even though it's been three years since we built our house, most of the walls are still bare. Some classy b&w prints would be nice. Something to ponder.

In any case, although those days in the darkroom are far behind me, I still have a few of those old b&w photos (scanned), as well as some newer ones (digital from the git-go), in my Flickr archive. Here's a sampling:

Mission San Juan Bautista

Moss Landing

Green Gulch Zen Center, Marin County

San Joaquin Valley

Joshua Tree NP

Ring of Brodgar, Orkney, Scotland

Home sweet home