A Year in Black and White, the Long Overdue Review

This is about two years late, but lately I felt an urge to speak on this. I don’t reread much of what I write, so it hadn’t been until recent that I did. That in turn kinda forced me to reflect on things.

Firstly, I wanna mention some technical details. If this isn’t what you came for, skip ahead two paragraphs. About ninety-nine percent of the film I’ve shot since 2021 has been HP5. So much for experimenting with different film stocks. Every now and then I would cheap out for Kentmere, but that didn’t happen until much more recent.

The developers however, have changed, as has my developing process, pretty drastically since writing the original post. At the time I was using a Rodinal variant and doing mostly semi-stand developing with semi-inconsistent results. A lot of bromide drag, haloing, and other variables that at first were cool while experimenting, became concerning when trying to make consistently good negatives. If there’s one thing i’m thankful for doing stand, it’s the liberating feeling of doing something completely different than what’s standard for bw dev. I switched to Ilford’s DDX in early 2022, which was the first developer I used back in 2018, sneaking in to the county college’s lab, not being a student and all. Sometimes I’m a real sucker for nostalgia and this was mostly my reasoning for choosing ddx. I liked the results I got when first getting into bw photography. Hell, I still like the results I got with ddx, and would probably still be using it today, if I didn’t have to get through a backlog of undeveloped film. At a 1+4 dilution (or 1+9 variation I think) it just didn’t make sense economically. Hence my switch to the now discontinued (but hopefully not for long) Kodak HC110. I’m mostly happy with the results and enjoy the versatility of it.

This review is not about film stocks or developers though. It’s about what this decision did for my relationship to photography. I now look back at 2021 as a rebirth for me in a way, because I didn’t have much direction previously, no formal education on it (still don’t) and did not have much understanding of the history of photography (probably still don’t to some extent). This “experiment” however, gave me solid ground to stand on, and the further I went the more I understood, and in turn started to like what I was seeing from my own work. It was a self sustaining passion project that continues on even as I write this, though I now shoot some color from time to time.

Some additional thoughts:

With reflection came another thought. This whole idea really simplified things for me. I gave myself one task: shoot and process your black and white for a year. That’s all I was focused on. I think this is a really important and often overlooked concept in photography, especially in our age of digital and social immediacy. To just keep things simple for yourself. Not to worry about gear, or seeing your photos as means to an end, or whether people will even like them. To just be. This, to me, is where the best work comes from.