Myall Lakes

It was two weeks ago, now, that we were in Myall Lakes. Despite being invigorating and creatively stimulating we found it exhausting and grueling. Both Isabel and Hazel tell me they were exhausted for the following week. We should have stopped to smell the flowers a little more, and embraced afternoon naps. I think I squeezed in one. Perhaps a morning off from from our five thirty am departures to capture the morning light.

It is hard isn’t it. Enjoying something so much you forget to stop. Photography is so like that. Much like many other obsessions.

We love it so much we forget to slow down.

I used to go into my darkroom at Mount Victoria. It would be light out. The late afternoon. I worked in silence except for the metronome that clicked endlessly in the background counting off seconds. I tried music, but it honestly distracted me and added extra emotions into my work. So I eventually gave up on that.

The detailed attention put me into another world. Time vanished. I printed and printed. Trying to get the perfect print. Eventually the ache in my head and tiredness would get to me and I would emerge from the blackness into the night. Well, actually it was early morning. I had printed most of the night away.

My back would ache from standing on concrete for hours. The fumes from the photographic chemicals made my head spin and ache. Despite the exhaust fan behind the baths sucking fresh air over them and the chemicals out the vent away from me, they still got to me. Nauseating me.

My fingers smelt of fixer, despite trying to use tongs and gloves and trying to keep the chemicals off your hands. It seems impossible to remain chemical free in the darkness.

Yet despite the physical pain and aches I kept doing it. Relentlessly trying to perfect a particular print.

Yesterday I had this romantic notion of buying a medium format camera that shoots square and returning. Today, luckily I remembered what it was really like. So I can abandon that idea again.

Printing digitally is amazing, despite the lack of physical contact with the print. Something was so different with film. Yet the ease and quality I can get from an inexpensive inkjet printer. One that costs less than the enlarger I used. Let alone the price of building and maintaining a film based darkroom, is truly amazing.

So why the pull to go back. Well, it is that loss of contact with the making of the print.

I must remind myself to return to the etching press again soon. Polymer Photogravures are where I am going to print my monochrome work. There is nothing better than pulling a photographic plate in an etching press after inking it myself. Seeing it for the first time…

Magical.

That is right Len, an etching press… You sold that medium format camera for one didn’t you. Well?

Photography and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020