Color Enlarger Contrast

I guess I should back up this week and let you know what's went on.  I attended the potluck and bowl glazing party at the Blue Moon on Monday and it was a lot of fun.  Glad I went.  I finally met Chris Max Thompson, resident ceramicist at the Blue Moon.  If you go to Facebook and look up Chris Thompson you can see the bowls.  Whomever was taking the 'snapshots' really didn't do that well of a job, as there were numerous pictures of people who probably aren't going to like their picture, of which I'm one! ; (

Tuesday I worked at High Hand Gallery and that just made me think harder about what images I might want to use as a gallery wrap for the Large Format Show.  I want to share something with you about the previous day I worked at the gallery a couple of weeks ago.  I met a gentleman who was interested in playing music for the gallery at any of the events and he gave me his card.  He asked what artwork I did and I showed him my photography, right?  Then he tells me was and is a photography teacher at Sierra.  Yikes!  I took him over to where I had several of my darkroom prints hanging and I asked him to basically critique it.  I knew that they weren't perfect and I honestly wanted to fix them.  He was very polite, said I had a good eye (that's good), as I told him how I was developing, the timing, the developer, the enlarger, the paper.  He told me to crank up the contrast and I should be good.  I told him the Ilford FB paper says (for a color enlarger) to increase the magenta to 45.  That always scared me.  I've only been on 20.  And as I mentioned earlier, I had also changed my timing to 2 minutes in the developer just like the instructions on the Dektol package recommend!

So I finally got in the darkroom to try out the new contrast number - and I am so pleased!!!  I don't know why I can't follow instructions, or why I get scared.  I mean what could happen?  You end up with an overexposed image and you have to throw it away?  These are the stumbling blocks of my own.  I feel sometimes I'm moving along at 'baby steps'.  I think I've learned a lot from just listening to someone in the know how.  Apparently I needed some reassurance.  I can't tell you how much better the images look.  I redeveloped all four images that are currently hanging in the gallery and I'm definitely changing them out!!

After that, last night I spent a couple hours just looking at some of my images from 2010 and 2011 for making a selection from, to enlarge to a 3' image.  Even making a rather LARGE image scares me.  But I can do it.  The 2' images I previously had made into gallery wraps came out great, so what am I worried about??  ; )  Good luck with your own 'baby steps'!!  I genuinely mean it!