Bruce Black and White Photographic Arts

Double-matted, placed behind glass in a solid wood frame, and now available for purchase! This original 11 X 14 in. metallic silver photo art (in a 16 X 20 in. frame) fittingly captures the distinctive lines and shapes in the front section of the historical Oxford County Courthouse in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. By David T. E. S. Cooke. Price: $110.

Printed this last night during our late-night darkroom session! It is a picture of the historical Oxford County Courthouse here in Woodstock, Ontario. Shot on my Pentax 645NII using Ilford Delta 400ISO 120 film - f/32, 1/125, 80mm. Printed on Ilford Multigrade IV RC paper. I plan to make this image available for sale in a matted and framed format. If interested, please inquire.

Just finished up a late-night darkroom session. I think we got some real gems... We will see when they dry in four hours.

My latest roll of Ilford Delta 400 film developed and printed onto a Contact Proof. The Contact Proof allows me to easily see the images I shot and critically evaluate their framing, composition, focus, exposure, and contrast. This helps me to decide what to print, what not to print, and what to re-shoot. It also shows what adjustments I need to make in the darkroom when enlarging, cropping, burning, dodging, changing contrast, and/or distorting a particular image. With my Pe...ntax 645NII camera, critical data is also imprinted below each frame in the film itself, telling me the f/stop, shutter speed, lens size, and other important details. I use this information, along with the image in the Contact Proof, to help me evaluate the quality of my photos. This way, I can know exactly how I achieved the resultant image, and what improvements I can make in the future. This is a very manual, deliberative, hands-on, pure approach to taking and printing pictures. It is the hallmark of the art of analogue photography. I have gone from real-world image to film to paper directly, allowing me maximal control over and interaction with my final output product (a photo-art image in silver halide paper).

It's easy to overlook the importance of temperature in developing film. If your chemicals or rinse water are too hot or too cold, the results could be disastrous. That "perfect" shot might be ruined - or at least degraded considerably! One of the persistent issues I have faced is a purple colour caste on my developed negatives. However, when I started regulating the temperature of my final rinse water, the problem vanished! Check out our video for more details... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvYl9tHLxzc