My First Good Print!

I've been in the darkroom......figuring out the correct timing on the Beseler enlarger. Started to print.....and the bulb dies on me. So, I go online and order two replacement bulbs to have on hand, which of course won't be here until Friday at best. And I move on to the other enlarger, the Vivitar (good thing I had two!) So basically, I needed to start from scratch as I hadn't used the Vivitar as yet. The guy I bought both enlargers from said he used the Vivitar the majority of the time. And I've only used Beselers.

I have to admit, I had to quit for a few minutes and read up again on the test strip for the print (not to be confused with the test strip for the contact sheet). So I guess there's more than one way to do the test strip. I ended up trying it the way it was described in my 'step-by-step' book, which was to expose the entire strip for 5 seconds; move the card 1/5 of the way and expose for 5 seconds; 10 seconds; 20 seconds; and 40 seconds. That seemed to work out better at f5.6. That only took about two hours with all the practice strips I did and two previous prints. The print I was making was of the Lone Pine in Monterey. Voila!! I have to say it's not perfect and could use some burning in the upper right corner - but this is alot better than my first try.

In the meantime of me washing this print, my dog starts barking outside the darkroom and is chasing this 2" black bumble bee in the studio! She's chasing it and I'm screaming and getting the chills every time it flies past me. So I had to run upstairs and grab a fly swatter, and of course Chica is following me, and we both run back downstairs and I manage to swat the thing and kill it. It's always something, as Gilda Radner used to say! Makes even the little things in life exciting!