The excitement for this last month was taking a platinum/palladium printing class from Walt O’Brien at his shop in Eugene, Oregon. Myself, Walt and two other people worked all day in the dark room to learn how to print with this alternative process. Never wanting to do darkroom work, I was a little skeptical, but was soon into the swing of it. We didn’t actually have to work in the dark or use an enlarger. Walt had spent an hour or so with each of us, several days before the class, to create 5x7” contact negatives from our digital images.. During the class we learned how to mix the chemicals in the proper proportions and after steaming the paper lightly, spread the mixture on the paper with a soft wide paint brush. The paper was then dried. After drying we placed our negatives directly on the paper and exposed them in a box that had been equipped with florescent tubes. After the correct amount of time we took them out and put them through several different baths, washed them and hung them to dry. As I said, never having done darkroom work, I was pretty excited with the results and can’t wait to do more and larger prints.

If you have an interest in trying this, you can contact me at (541) 915-0360 or Walt at his shop at (541)729-3572