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Re: the true destiny of negatives

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: sstoney@pdq.net (shannon stoney)
Reply-to: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 08:09:38 -0500

>How long can I leave them in the freezer?  They've been stored at room
>temperature for about six months, in the dark.

Its best to develop right away, but black and white film can be stored for years without serious problems.  

Bill

---------- Original Message ------------------------
From: sstoney@pdq.net (shannon stoney)
Reply-to: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 08:09:38 -0500

Carl wrote:

>I want to concur with something Jeffrey just said: If you've got a large
>batch of negatives and realize that you don't know how to handle them for
>good results, the best thing you can do is stick them in the freezer with
>notes on how they were exposed. Then do brand new work 'from scratch' until
>you are getting negatives that print the way you want. It's likely that
>learning process will give you a much better idea of what can be done to
>rescue the earlier negatives, if you still want to bother with them after
>doing the new work.

How long can I leave them in the freezer?  They've been stored at room
temperature for about six months, in the dark.


>
>To editorialize for a moment, one of the most frequent traps photographers
>fall into is to spend more time struggling to print existing work when
>they'd be better served to spend the time making new pictures that print
>easily. There's no special virtue in struggling heroically to make prints,
>and no shame in making negatives so good you can print them with your hands
>in your pockets.

I agree. When I finally learned to make a perfect negative for silver
printing, it was a whole new world.  Not only did printing go a lot faster,
but the prints were *way* better.  That's why I've been worried about these
negatives that I think are not perfect for alt process, and maybe their
true destiny is to be silver negatives.  However, it's probably possible to
be overly obsessive-compulsive about this.

--shannon