Hardly what I would consider perfect, but it’s getting there. I’m just so glad it wasn’t a complete failure! There are a lot of factors that contributed to it, but I’m sure it’ll get worked out with a little bit of time. The most difficult thing right now is trying to find good exposure times for different media. I’m perhaps not the most precise person (you should see my approach to alternative process photography…), so it’ll be a little bit of a challenge. I really don’t think that a halftone photograph was the best choice for a first print, I was just impatient and it was the first thing I dug up.

I’m going to dig up the test print (hopefully I still have it) that I did of the image during the spring and compare it. The halftone dots are obviously not very clear, the lack of vacuum is pretty obvious. What I ended up doing was covering the whole thing with a piece of black fleece (blocks out the crazy light) and placed some boxes and pieces of wood on the screen to keep the space between the film and the screen to a minimum. After seeing the result from tonight, I think I’m going to need a little more weight or at least something a little bit bigger (perhaps it didn’t cover the entire area of the film?).

Coating the screen was a snap, I did it all in the bathroom with the lights off and the door open to catch the light from the other room. Could do with a bit more light, actually. Maybe I’m being paranoid about exposing the emulsion? Better safe than sorry, I suppose. I’m not letting all of that emulsion go to waste because of some careless error. Anyone have info on how sensitive Ulano TZ emulsion is? The lights in the bathroom are just the standard incandescents, I think four of them, probably 60 watt.

To summarize, the potential factors that contribute to the less-than-stellar print include…

• lack of hinge clamps on my table (they’re there, just not attached.)
• the ink that’s practically two years old
• exposure time (around 1 min to be safe; too long? too short?)
• water too strong when washing out/poor job washing out (it’s pretty difficult to see what has been washed out versus what hasn’t)

Part of the thrill is being able to solve these problems. …Point me back to this entry when I’m tearing out my hair and screaming expletives loud enough the neighbors can hear me.