This year at Brescia I was able to visit Russ Young in Floyd Virginia to expand my knowledge of film photography and learn how to make prints in the dark room. While I was there I seven rolls of film and made four or five good prints. The process is simple put chemical A on paper then B then C in that order for the right amount of time, but i wanted to understand more and know how to pick chemicals out on my own. I decided on D76 as the developer, stop bath, Fixer, and Dektol all Kodak brand chemicals because they are still being made and easy to find. The film I use is Tmax or Tri-x both black and white Kodak films. The main thing you need for making prints is an enlarger, its a device use to enlarge smaller 35mm film to as big as 16in by 20in prints. Using an enlarger is not an easy task it you need to follow directions that arn't always straight forward i wont try to explain it but you have to set the contrast filter inside of the enlarger to print on certain grades of paper. After learning all of this i got the dark room at Brescia working and started making prints there and I plan to continue after i can afford more chemicals, paper and film.
Russ Young in the Floyd Country Store 2017.
Russ Youngs dark room.