I am making most of the mild spell this weekend and spending some time in the darkroom again (in recent years electricity has become the single biggest cost of my darkroom time, so I tend to leave the printing to late spring and early autumn). Also, I have not done much photography since our June holiday, really produced just one worth-while photograph since, so have not been spending much time in the darkroom either. But I have been meaning to make some very small prints to use as cards for a while.

Thing is, I don’t normally make small prints. Not that there is anything wrong with a small print (indeed I’d argue than an exceptional small print is lot harder to produce than a big one), but it is not my thing, I like big photographs. So I typically do test prints at 10” x 8”, and then print ‘for real’ at 16” x 12” (~A3) or 16” x 20” (~A2). Also, most of my photography in recent years has been done with the 4x5 camera, and I can’t make much smaller prints from that than the 10” x 8” the normal way, as the enlarger will not focus that close to the paper.

So this weekend I am making contact prints.

And thing is, I don’t normally make contact prints either. Traditionally the contact print is a means of assessing and culling negatives, but I find for me scanning is a better way of doing that, since it allows me to catalog and tag my images as well (and contrary to appearances, I am not a card-carrying Luddite).

But as the negative grows in size, the contact print becomes a photograph in its own right, and the masters of old who worked with full plate cameras (10x8), often contact printed. The big advantage of the contact print is you get out of the negative every little detail that is there — a 10x8 LF contact print is unlike any other 10” x 8” print you will ever see.

The 4x5 is a bit in the middle; a 4” x 5” photograph is big enough to see what is on it, but the image is too small to effectively apply the basic printing techniques of burning and dodging — you really need a technically good negative to produce a decent contact print. But the other side of that coin is a good contact print is very gratifying.

Having done a run of the one negative I want to use for cards yesterday, I am so pleased with the results I have decide to make a ‘Scottish Coast’ series of contact prints produced to a proper archival standard, selenium toned. If it goes according to plan, I might make a bunch of these available in exchange for a donation to charity. I have no idea if there would be interest in that, but I think it’s worth a try; watch this space.