For this large format camera workshop, participants were invited to walk in the footsteps of nineteenth-century photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. This was a truly hands-on experience: using a large format 4×5 plate field camera and developing the results in our very own pop-up darkroom, set up in the heart of Barnstaple, North Devon. A rare chance to follow the entire analogue photography process from start to glorious finish.
I’ll admit, we did cheat a little. Rather than hand-coating paper to make our own negatives, as Talbot would have done, we used Ilford darkroom paper to speed things along. I pre-loaded the paper the night before, ready for the day’s work.
Taking a photograph with a field camera isn’t simple. In fact, it’s a dance of patience and precision. The camera is bulky, unwieldy, and demands to be carefully set up before a single frame can be made. Light readings must be taken, the aperture and shutter speed set, the shutter cocked, and focusing all while peering beneath a dark cloth at an upside-down, back-to-front image on the ground glass. Easy? Not quite.
I really wanted to show the group just how sharp, alert, and present you have to be to master this process. There are so many steps to perform, and check along the way. I’m pleased to say that every one of them managed brilliantly, without any mishap.
Because the paper we used was very slow, just like the process the Victorians used — I could show them how photographers of the time captured those eerie, empty street scenes. Even though the day was blazing bright and hot, we achieved wonderfully slow shutter speeds, turning passers-by and vehicles into ghostly blurs, or erasing them altogether.
Every part of this process requires attention. You can’t help but be present in the moment. And that, of course, was part of the reason for offering this and other analogue photography workshops to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, a chance not only to connect with others and break the isolation, but to lose yourself in this mindful, purposeful, tactile craft.
And the magic didn’t stop with the taking of the photograph itself. Far from it. Our pop-up darkroom , red safelight glowing, was ready with trays of chemicals waiting. We processed the paper negatives by hand, always a small thrill as the image slowly revealed itself in the developer. Once developed and fixed, we contact printed the negatives to create positive prints.
