Being overseas has meant that I have never had an opportunity to take a printing course or workshop, or even work in a darkroom with an experienced printer. Thus all I know I have gleaned from books and online resources. A lot of stuff online is simply too basic, or poorly produced. The best I have found are listed below, but if you have other suggestions please add them here.
Andrea Calabresi - Darkroom Tutorial #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woXZb8gjG4o This short tutorial explains how to determine correct exposure and contrast filter using an understandable and easily repeatable process. I really like it.
Black and White Darkroom Printing Techniques - Lynda.com - To view this requires signing up for a trial membership with Lynda.com. Most of their courses are digital-related (Photoshop, etc.), so if you are interested in that you might find a lot of stuff on their site you like. For photography, I'm all analog, so I only did the trial. This is a course with about fifteen 10 minute episodes, and is the best thing I have seen for beginners, and also includes a very good explanation of split contrast printing. It will be interesting to compare this approach to Andrea's single filter approach described in the video above.
I'm distracted these days by wet plate and camera-building, but as soon as I get this out of my system I plan to spend a lot more time in the darkroom exploring the negatives I have been making over the last five years, so I am open to learning whatever I can. So, if you know of other good resources, please add them here.
Bookmarks