Success 1/22/15

It finally worked and the results are finally consistent. It turns out that it may have been me exposing the photo paper to light! Here's my new theory: when I would choose a photo I would put everything into focus and bring the photo paper over to the enlarger and then place it face down on make sure that the alignment was right and then when I had figured everything out I would turn the light off, flip the paper, and then turn on the light for the real exposure.

Today my friend Zach was watching me try and make a print and the first one was black of course because I flipped the paper, but afterwards he asked if that was maybe causing the issue. At this point I was set on it being someone else's fault that the paper had already been exposed but sure enough, when I stopped trying to align everything perfectly all of a sudden everything fell into place and I got some of my best work! All of the photographs were developed using f/8 on 2.5 seconds.

Allie

Zoe and Dorthy

All of my works to date.

 Needless to say I will be sleeping easy tonight knowing that my budget is finished and that I finally have some kind of consistency in my work. I was pretty successful with the image quality and only have a few water spots and streaks that are invisible on a computer but that are very visible in person. I know I said earlier that I was not searching for perfection in my pictures but it's a really nice feeling when you pull the print out of the last chemical bath and get to see how crisp and clear the image is. I cannot wait for future developments!