Are there still Fine-Art darkroom printing courses of advanced and very advanced level?

[Carnie Bob]

Ellie Young at her Gold Street Studios and Gallery in Victoria, Australia has year round workshops, predominantly in alternative printing.
I get her newsletter and, prior to Covid a lot of those workshops were being given by international printers, Tim Rudman amongst them.

https://www.goldstreetstudios.com.au/workshops/

There are three public darkrooms somewhat local to me where teaching is a big part of their business model. What their level of expertise is, I couldn't say, but the interest in the craft is certainly there given the enthusiasm in their reviews, the resulting artwork displayed and the booked out sessions.

As Mr. Carnie mentioned, losing Bill Schwab hits on so many levels. His enthusiasm for 'Photostock' and the teaching/gathering/communal darkroom he created are just two of them.

Hi Molli - interesting you mention Ellie Young, she is going to be part of a Canadian / Australian show exchange between her and my gallery, the Aussies are here Fall of 2026 and We are coming to Australia Feb 2027 - we are setting up workshops for the Ausssies and they are setting up workshops for our group at Ellies studio gallery , which will be part of her symposium.

 

[Carnie Bob]

That made me laugh. I don't have the experience or skill set to teach darkroom work, but I do have the patience and I could certainly cover the basics and I love finding ways to teach and seeing people learning new things..... I just can't be in an enclosed darkroom with anyone! Yes, my darkroom is small, but it's just having people in my space that makes me twitch. I'd last 30 seconds before I pushed them out with a broomstick.

Besides, the one time I let a friend sit in while I finished up some prints, he decided to check his phone.

I always encourage my clients to work with me , with one rule, they are not to direct me whatsoever, this works in most cases, in one case a client was a complete disaster and we did not work well together. But on average it always is good for my clients understand the process so when they talk about their work they have the backstory on how their prints are made.

 

[Molli]

Hi Molli - interesting you mention Ellie Young, she is going to be part of a Canadian / Australian show exchange between her and my gallery, the Aussies are here Fall of 2026 and We are coming to Australia Feb 2027 - we are setting up workshops for the Ausssies and they are setting up workshops for our group at Ellies studio gallery , which will be part of her symposium.

Oh wow, that's fantastic to hear! I'm forever trying to work myself up to attending gallery openings, exhibitions, etc. but the end result is always that, yes, I do indeed work myself up!

The National Gallery of Victoria currently has an exhibition of female photographers that I'm going to make myself go to because, as a couple of you have said, a lot of us younger/newer printers haven't even seen a fine art print and, while the printmaking isn't the focus of this exhibition, I definitely need to be seeing more work out in the real world and not just in books or on a screen.

There have been a few workshops up at Gold Street that I'd have loved to have attended but, like most things, having learned so much through books and trial and error, I have no idea of my 'level' so to speak. Even if I had that sort of money, spending it on any sort of class and discovering that it's either too basic or too advanced is one of my (many!) problems.

So, pretend I drove up to Trentham in 2027 and said "Hi and welcome!" while I sit here safely on my side of the screen here.

 

[MattKing]

This sort of connecting from afar is what an internet resource is the very best at!

 

[images39]

Bruce Barnbaum is still offering workshops, including this one on darkroom printing:

The Autumn 2026 Complete Photographic Process for B&W

Instructor: Bruce Barnbaum November 1 - 6, 2026 Workshop Fee: $2150 (includes complete lab fees) Deposit amount: $350

www.barnbaum.com

I took it back in 2014, and it was good; very hands-on in the darkroom. It was held in his home, which has a large darkroom with several enlargers for classes. About one week long. Looks like it's now only once a year, with the next one in Nov. 2026.

Dale

 

[Elmarc]

Perhaps this is something (and I'd like to signal in the rest of the forum staff on this as well) we could play a role in as an online community/platform. While we may probably not start organizing workshops etc., when it comes to disseminating information, we have a role to play. I'm willing to dedicate some time and effort on this for sure.

I think this is a great idea.
Alternative processes aside, information on making a decent straight print seems quite easy to find but making a great print is not. Maybe because the latter is not easily taught remotely. I don't know..

 

[logan2z]

...I have no idea of my 'level' so to speak.

[Apologies if this takes the thread a bit off-topic, but the quoted post by @Molli took me in this direction. If the moderators think this is better as its own thread, then I can start one]

I struggle with this as well. I'm self-taught (with the help of books, videos and forums like this one) and have been making darkroom prints for 8 years. When compared to the level of experience of some on this forum, I guess that makes me a relative newbie.

While I'm fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to see a large number of museum and gallery exhibitions of silver gelatin prints from a wide variety of photographers, I don't think I could really come up with a definition of what makes a 'good' print. The one definition I have seen often is 'a print that contains the full range of tones, from bright whites to deep blacks, and everything in between'. In my experience, at least, this definition seems too narrow (dare I say outdated) and doesn't represent many of the prints that I've observed in person, especially from living photographers or those from the recent past.

The very low contrast prints of Henry Wessel come to mind. I was shocked when I first saw these prints in person at the SFMoMa retrospective several years ago as I was not expecting them to look so washed out. But shadow detail was apparently something he prized, and he made a set of aesthetic choices to get him there. Mark Steinmetz is another photographer whose prints strike me as low in contrast and bathed in 'grey', yet I often hear him referred to as a highly-skilled darkroom printer. In a more extreme case, take the very high-contrast prints of Daido Moriyama, which contain virtually no mid-tones. Yet another example that has always stuck with me was a vintage print of Robert Frank's well-known "San Francisco, 1956" that I saw at an exhibition at Pier 24 several years ago. To my eyes, the sun-bathed background looked pretty blown out. Is this the look that Frank was after? Was he just an unskilled printer and unable to produce anything better?

Are the prints by Wessel, Steinmetz, Moriyama and Frank 'good' prints? Who is the arbiter of such things anyway? If a print doesn't look like something produced by one of the 'old masters' like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston, is it amateurish/poorly produced?

As I try daily to become a 'better' printer, these sorts of questions prey on my mind. Maybe I should just stop worrying about these things and simply make work that satisfies me.

I bring this up in the context of this thread because I often wonder what I'd actually learn if I took a darkroom printing course from an 'expert'. Would I be pushed towards an aesthetic like Sexton, Adams, Weston using large format photography and the zone system as the only way to get to a 'good' print? I'm not really interested in that. What I would be interested in is having someone critique my prints and help me hone my skills in order to realize my personal aesthetic, not that of some theoretical gold standard.

 

[DutchDarkroom]

I'm doing a school project, here in the Netherlands at the end of school you do a big project on whatever subject you want. I decided to do mine on making a quality silver gelatin print. i'm gonna write a project report containing all the information i know and learn about silver gelatin. I'll go to spain to photograph els enfarinats (crazy egg and flour throwing thing) and make a series of prints from it. Because of time and location constraints i can probably not follow any workshops so i'll try to get my information from books, videos, my own experiences and this forum. Of course all help from you guys will be very greatly appreciated!

This made me think though, i might translate my report and post it here or on a site or something for anyone to use. Maybe we could make a sort of wikipedia where everyone can add or edit information, of course with some system to prevent misinformation or something. Pretty big dream but it would be pretty damn nice.

 

[Elmarc]

[Apologies if this takes the thread a bit off-topic, but the quoted post by @Molli took me in this direction. If the moderators think this is better as its own thread, then I can start one]

I struggle with this as well. I'm self-taught (with the help of books, videos and forums like this one) and have been making darkroom prints for 8 years. When compared to the level of experience of some on this forum, I guess that makes me a relative newbie.

While I'm fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to see a large number of museum and gallery exhibitions of silver gelatin prints from a wide variety of photographers, I don't think I could really come up with a definition of what makes a 'good' print. The one definition I have seen often is 'a print that contains the full range of tones, from bright whites to deep blacks, and everything in between'. In my experience, at least, this definition seems too narrow (dare I say outdated) and doesn't represent many of the prints that I've observed in person, especially from living photographers or those from the recent past.

The very low contrast prints of Henry Wessel come to mind. I was shocked when I first saw these prints in person at the SFMoMa retrospective several years ago as I was not expecting them to look so washed out. But shadow detail was apparently something he prized, and he made a set of aesthetic choices to get him there. Mark Steinmetz is another photographer whose prints strike me as low in contrast and bathed in 'grey', yet I often hear him referred to as a highly-skilled darkroom printer. In a more extreme case, take the very high-contrast prints of Daido Moriyama, which contain virtually no mid-tones. Yet another example that has always stuck with me was a print of Robert Frank's well-known "San Francisco, 1956" that I saw at an exhibition at Pier 24 several years ago. To my eyes, the sun-bathed background looked pretty blown out. Is this the look that Frank was after? Was he just an unskilled printer and unable to produce anything better?

Are the prints by Wessel, Steinmetz, Moriyama and Frank 'good' prints? Who is the arbiter of such things anyway? If a print doesn't look like something produced by one of the 'old masters' like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston, is it amateurish/poorly produced?

As I try daily to become a 'better' printer, these sorts of questions prey on my mind. Maybe I should just stop worrying about these things and simply make work that satisfies me.

I bring this up in the context of this thread because I often wonder what I'd actually learn if I took a darkroom printing course from an 'expert'. Would I be pushed towards an aesthetic like Sexton, Adams, Weston using large format photography and the zone system as the only way to get to a 'good' print? I'm not really interested in that. What I would be interested in is having someone critique my prints and help me hone my skills in order to realize my personal aesthetic, not that of some theoretical gold standard.

Excellent points that I have also considered along the way. Techniques aside, I think that ultimately a 'good' print will be the one that compliments the actual photograph itself. The photographers that you mention all have quite diverse styles and as a result so is their vision of printing.

 

[Elmarc]

A case in point.
Hope this is not too off topic..

 

[koraks]

This made me think though, i might translate my report and post it here or on a site or something for anyone to use.

That would be great! Please feel welcome to do so.

Maybe we could make a sort of wikipedia where everyone can add or edit information, of course with some system to prevent misinformation or something. Pretty big dream but it would be pretty damn nice.

Well, big dream, perhaps, but maybe we also live in a big reality already. The thing is, the collective contents of the forum are a pretty good 'wisdom of the crowds' record of many photographic subject. Of course, up to recently, it was difficult to navigate that (search helped a lot of course). Now with LLM technology it's already possible to get a pretty good summary of certain topics. For instance, I just asked Copilot to give me pros & cons and a recommendation on the use of stop bath for film and paper based on Photrio forum contents. This is what it results in, which may not necessarily be everyone's preferred answer, but it's arguably valid (and please, please let's not debate the answer as such, as that's not the point and we have a massive thread about it already; it's just an illustration):

Short Answer:
Based on discussions on Photrio.com, the consensus is that an acid stop bath is strongly recommended for paper processing, while for film processing water rinses are often sufficient, though many still prefer a mild stop bath to protect fixer longevity.

---

Pros of Using Stop Bath (from Photrio discussions)​

• Immediate arrest of development: Acid stop halts developer activity instantly, preventing uneven development.
• Protects fixer: Maintains fixer acidity and extends its life by neutralizing developer carryover.
• Prevents staining/haze: Reduces risk of dichroic haze, calcium foam, and sludge formation in fixer.
• Consistency in prints: Especially important for fiber-based papers, where water rinses can lead to staining.
• Control in hot climates: Hardening stop baths can prevent excessive gelatin swelling in film emulsions.

---

Cons of Using Stop Bath​

• Not strictly necessary for film: Many Photrio members note that water rinses work fine for film, especially with modern fixers.
• Risk of contamination: Sharing stop/fixer between film and paper can introduce fibers or silver residues, risking film quality.
• Extra chemical step: Adds cost, handling, and potential odor (acetic acid smell).
• Over-acidification risk: If too strong, can stress emulsions or shorten fixer life.

---

Photrio-Specific Observations​

• Film:
  • Many users skip stop bath and use water instead, especially for black-and-white film.
  • Acid stop is optional but can be useful for consistency and fixer preservation.
  • Strong advice: keep film stop/fixer separate from paper chemistry to avoid contamination.
• Paper:
  • Acid stop bath is considered essential by most Photrio contributors.
  • Water-only rinses often lead to staining or uneven results, especially with fiber papers.
  • Stop bath extends fixer life significantly when processing large volumes of prints.

---

Final Recommendation (based on Photrio consensus)​

• For Film:
  • Use a water rinse between developer and fixer for simplicity.
  • Consider a mild acid stop bath if you want maximum fixer longevity or are working in hot conditions.
  • Always keep film chemistry separate from paper chemistry.
• For Paper:
  • Use a proper acid stop bath (e.g., diluted acetic or citric acid).
  • This ensures consistent halting of development, prevents staining, and protects fixer capacity.
  • Essential for fiber-based papers; less critical but still recommended for RC papers.

---

Bottom Line:
On Photrio, the strong consensus is: water is fine for film, acid stop is essential for paper. If you want maximum consistency and fixer life, use stop bath for both—but if you’re simplifying, film can safely skip it.

Sources: Photrio forum discussions on stop bath importance.

What I like about this approach is that it doesn't rely on some kind of enforced consensus that we need to reach (which is a problem with a wiki-like approach), we get to effectively use everything we've already discussed, and the quality of the answer can improve as LLM's evolve without any need to alter the underlying data (i.e. our forum discussions). Moreover, the answer can be specific to anyone's individual preferences and context since many LLM tools are capable of learning about your specific needs/requirements.
Is it perfect? Of course not. But I think it's pretty good already.

There are two obvious drawbacks:
1: Not everyone is willing or able to use LLM tech today. I assume that in the (near) future it will be pretty much pervasive, though.
2: Within the context of this thread, the question is really how to learn the craft, and that's a different question from how to find specific bits of information. The latter can be part of the former, of course.

Especially based on #2 I'd like to park this avenue for a bit and allow the thread to go back to which master printers offer some form of tuition, workshops etc. We can certainly explore the question of how to harness the wealth of information on Photrio in better ways, but I think we should do it in a parallel thread.

 

[Milpool]

You clearly know this already but there’s no unique thing that makes a print great vs good unless you are the person who made the print, because only you know (hopefully) what you’d like to have made. To that end, the technical side is like in any other creative endeavour - ie you want to get as close as you can to a point where your technical abilities don’t limit you (within reason of course). If you see the print a certain way in your mind’s eye, you don’t want to have to compromise because you lack the technique.

Once you get there, however, you want (presumably) to make the print look the way you honestly want it to look. By this I mean just because you might be the best in the world at every conceivable print control doesn’t mean your prints need to have a technical tour de force aesthetic. Moving beyond the display of technical mastery to doing it how you want to do it isn’t always so easy.

[Apologies if this takes the thread a bit off-topic, but the quoted post by @Molli took me in this direction. If the moderators think this is better as its own thread, then I can start one]

I struggle with this as well. I'm self-taught (with the help of books, videos and forums like this one) and have been making darkroom prints for 8 years. When compared to the level of experience of some on this forum, I guess that makes me a relative newbie.

While I'm fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to see a large number of museum and gallery exhibitions of silver gelatin prints from a wide variety of photographers, I don't think I could really come up with a definition of what makes a 'good' print. The one definition I have seen often is 'a print that contains the full range of tones, from bright whites to deep blacks, and everything in between'. In my experience, at least, this definition seems too narrow (dare I say outdated) and doesn't represent many of the prints that I've observed in person, especially from living photographers or those from the recent past.

The very low contrast prints of Henry Wessel come to mind. I was shocked when I first saw these prints in person at the SFMoMa retrospective several years ago as I was not expecting them to look so washed out. But shadow detail was apparently something he prized, and he made a set of aesthetic choices to get him there. Mark Steinmetz is another photographer whose prints strike me as low in contrast and bathed in 'grey', yet I often hear him referred to as a highly-skilled darkroom printer. In a more extreme case, take the very high-contrast prints of Daido Moriyama, which contain virtually no mid-tones. Yet another example that has always stuck with me was a vintage print of Robert Frank's well-known "San Francisco, 1956" that I saw at an exhibition at Pier 24 several years ago. To my eyes, the sun-bathed background looked pretty blown out. Is this the look that Frank was after? Was he just an unskilled printer and unable to produce anything better?

Are the prints by Wessel, Steinmetz, Moriyama and Frank 'good' prints? Who is the arbiter of such things anyway? If a print doesn't look like something produced by one of the 'old masters' like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston, is it amateurish/poorly produced?

As I try daily to become a 'better' printer, these sorts of questions prey on my mind. Maybe I should just stop worrying about these things and simply make work that satisfies me.

I bring this up in the context of this thread because I often wonder what I'd actually learn if I took a darkroom printing course from an 'expert'. Would I be pushed towards an aesthetic like Sexton, Adams, Weston using large format photography and the zone system as the only way to get to a 'good' print? I'm not really interested in that. What I would be interested in is having someone critique my prints and help me hone my skills in order to realize my personal aesthetic, not that of some theoretical gold standard.

 

[MattKing]

It can be easier to recognize a bad print than one that deserves the label "good".
But most important of all, is being able to compare two attempts at a print, and being able to see which one is better at doing something important, and having an understanding of why.
I have a few good examples of the following print:

The reason that I can tell they are good, is I recognize the correlation between the original subject and the print, in particular the relative brilliance of the highlights, and the (literal in some case) feeling of depth to the shadows.
For a more subtle example, I share this example, where the choice of shadow and highlight tones is more closely correlated with the feeling I was trying to communicate - which correlated with the experience of standing and looking up into the canopy:

In this case, my choice of image tone is also important.
I would say the difference between a good printer - as compared to a good print - is that the good printer has the tools and experience to achieve a wide variety of results intentionally, as well as the ability to visualize a number of possible results.
I think that there are similarities between good printers, and good musicians.

 

[logan2z]

...you want to get as close as you can to a point where your technical abilities don’t limit you (within reason of course). If you see the print a certain way in your mind’s eye, you don’t want to have to compromise because you lack the technique.

I would say the difference between a good printer - as compared to a good print - is that the good printer has the tools and experience to achieve a wide variety of results intentionally, as well as the ability to visualize a number of possible results.

I wholeheartedly agree with both of these statements. Thanks for responding.

 

[popdoc]

Stephen G Sherman, Power of Process!
powerofprocesstips@gmail.com
Great workshops, innovator, teacher, motivator

 

[Silverprint Italy]

I am very happy that this thread is getting "hot", with a lot of suggestions and some interesting names to check out for those seeking to master the darkroom processes.

I am searching the web all around the world for high quality and advanded darkroom tuition and, as said before, the problem is finding advanced classes with master printers, while for beginners and medium level things are much easier, there are many community darkrooms, institutions and labs doing this job.
I think we shall also separate people doing alternative and ancient processes, from those doing traditional silver print in the darkroom (those appear to me as the most endangered species right now).

I began teaching in 1996 and I started printing as a kid in 1980, in 1995 I started my own printing lab and for some years making fine prints for clients has been my primary job, then slowly teaching become the most important and almost exclusive job, aside my own personal artistic projects.

@logan2z ; @Molli
I've been struggling decades (and I still have to apply with discipline) to put my personal taste and preferences aside to try to define what is a Fine Print, both for the sake of my students (i want them to be them and not clones of me - it's better for them, anyway) and to be able to give my clients prints that were up or above their expectations. So you were right and posted a very good question, can we define what is a fine print? I can say my opinion, there will be different ones, surely.

What I can say is that is not a mere technical thing (whole range of tones for example), but in a fine print (any) technique is skillfully used to get the desired outcome, and that outcome may be of any style: soft, hard, grainy, smooth, harsh, toned, neutral, warm, cold, matt, superglossy, ANYTHING! The world is full of wonderful prints of any style.
And since no style can be better than another per sé, we may get to a point and that is coherence; coherence with the artist's statement; coherence with the subjetcs, for example a sweet romantic portrait will not be hard, grainy and cold (unless the artist's statement is so clear and strong to overcame this incoherence, but that seldom happens).
Coherence is rooted in iconography and in our visual culture, but also, and not with less importance, in the phisiology of the human vision. Culture and perception are always interwined.

Then there is a high degree of attention to the details, every part of a print has its role in enhancing the artistic intentions of the author, so a silly thing in a corner shall not attract your eye more than the main subject, etc. I define this problem of photography (painters do not have it) as "perceptive conflict". It happens when in a print there is something that attracts the eye, but not the mind or the heart. This generates a distraction and will not allow to reach a conteplative state because everytime the viewer relaxes his eyes are drawn to the insignificant spot and he's forced to redirect them where they should. Prints with perceptive conflicts will not be watched long. The next level is arranging a preferencial path for the viewer, estabilishing a time jerarchy in the elements of the image.
All then shall be coherently displayed, in any possible coherent way. And again coherence is the important thing; the best display could be a pin in the bare print in a poor wall or the most luxurious custom frame. Again, there are no rules except coherence.
This may seem poor and simple, but making this happen may require a tremendous amount thinking and of darkroom work!

 

[Milpool]

Incidentally thanks for bringing up Wessel. He was one (of several) whose prints helped “free” me into printing more honestly.

I wholeheartedly agree with both of these statements. Thanks for responding.