Postcards from the darkroom

Last September I went back to the darkroom after a 10 years’ break.

I am nowhere near the level I’d like to be at – neither as photographer nor as printer – however it’s been good fun and gave me the chance to play with a number of toys.

One of the activities that managed to bring me back consistently to printing is participating to an analog postcard exchange – that is, printing some postcard-sized picture and send them around the world whilst receiving images back from other people.

These above are the ones I printed so far – not all sent though. It’s been good for a few reasons:

• In exchange for a single picture of mine (more only if I feel like it), I get boatloads from elsewhere 😊(which are often nicer and carry cute stamps)
• Printing a postcard is less demanding – less attention to detail, less chemicals, fewer steps in the process (although I want to tone the next ones)
• I feel like I don’t necessarily need to do top work to participate – which does not imply being sloppy
• Even if the process is simple, as you are doing quite a few, it’s quite easy to do some attempts here and there to see the differences – learning that can be used elsewhere or when printing the same negative bigger
• There’s some good people doing it whose work and motivation I am getting to know