top of page

Making a Positive in the Dark Room

To make a positive you will have to first have a negative, you can get a negative by using a pin hole camera, which i explained in my blog called 'Dark Room using a Pin Hole Camera.' Once you have done what it i said in that blog you can make a positive. You use the negative you have produced using the pin hole camera, you then use the enlargers in the dark room. You get a new piece of photo paper and put it shiny side facing upwards you then put your negative on top of the photo paper with the photo facing downwards on the shiny side of your new piece of photo paper. Next you set the light on the enlarger to anything between about 5-10 seconds, once you have set it you press the button and the light will shine on to the photo paper and turn your photo into a positive. You can also place a clean piece of glass on top of the photos before you turn the light on to make sure that your photo isn't curved because some times the negative isn't always straight.

Once you have exposed it to the light you put your new photo paper in to the developer for about 2 minutes, after you move it to the stop for 3 seconds and then you put it in the stop for a minimum of 3 minutes. Next you post the positive through the slide and it lands into the water where you can see what you have produced, after the photo paper have been left in the water for a minimum of 5 minutes, you will put it through the dryer and you will have your positive. On the positive, there will be a black border from where the light got to the photo paper, on your positive the colours will be swapped over. So on your negative the sky will be black but on your positive the sky will be white. All the black spots on your negative will be white on your positive and all the white spots on your negative will be black on your positive.

Also we created another positive, but instead of putting it in to the developer we used a paint brush to paint/splat the developer on to the photo paper so only the certain parts the we wanted to show would be developed. Next we put the photo paper in stop, then fix and then in the water where it stayed for 5 minutes. Finally we put the photo through the dryer.

bottom of page