Do you remember your first print?

[Sean]

I was 17yrs old, and it was a high school photography class. We did a standard portrait shoot with some hot lights as the first photo. I remember stumbling through the film processing thinking surely nothing will turn out. The film turned out fine. Then it was off to the closet/darkroom. The darkroom could only fit 3 people. After watching the teacher make a few prints it was my turn. I put in the neg, focused, made a test strip. We came up with a rough exposure and went with it. I'll never forget the image and the way it fully appeared in the developer. I was absolutely hooked at that very moment, it was such an exhilarating thing! I have a horrible long term memory, but that memory is one of the few that really stands out in my life. I even remember the girl I photographed was Nancy. Ask me anyone else's name in that class and I couldn't tell you. Do you remember your first print? Would love to hear about it.

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[blansky]

I was selling advertising for The Red Deer Advocate in Red Deer Alberta Canada. I took some shots with my 35mm of a flooded town during the spring. I went with the newsphotographer into the darkroom and he showed me how to print. I printed 5 different 8x10s that went into the paper. I was 24 years old.

A year later I opened my own studio. What a moron.

Michael McBlane

 

[Nige]

I've probably still got my first recognisable print.. I don't throw anything out I'm not sure what exactly was the 1st print, and I imagine there were a few duds to start with cause I was teaching myself from a book, but the 1st couple where pictures of our old tractor and our pet geese... might scan the contact sheet and upload it if your interested?

I'm pretty organised and have all my B&W negs in folders with contact strips except I never used to record anything other than occasionaly the contact exposure, I wish I'd written the date on them! Usually can work out the year via what's in the pictures (and that they're all in sequential order) but would have been nice to have written it down at the time.

Over the years I've inheirited various B&W negs from both sides of my family. Recently I contact printed a heap (mostly 6x9cm, but some other weird sizes too) and showed them to my mother thinking she'd be interested and identify some of the people in them (they're pretty much all of people and the occasional horse.. can't remember seeing a scenic) but she hardly looked or missed a breath while conversing with my wife. I've lost interest in doing the rest...

 

[Jeremy]

2nd grade. We made pinhole cameras and exposed sheets of photo paper one at a time (about 6x9) and then developed these negative images. I used to have it on my darkroom wall but it was lost during my last move

Photo was of a car in the parking lot outside of the cubicle and we used red christmas tree lights as safe lights and the fixer made me sick. I loved every minute of it.

 

[Lex Jenkins]

I was 8 or 9 and making contact prints from my Brownie. Little prints but fun and it all fit in our tiny bathroom - 'til mom kicked me out.

My first enlargement? Probably age 11-12 at the local Y. Don't recall the subject - I was shooting anything and everything then, none of it very well. Seems like one of my first good prints was of a horse in NYC's Central Park.

 

[Ole]

I remember my first picture, I still have it somewhere... I had done prints in school before (7th grade), then brought in a negative I had made myself: A close-up of some straws, shot with my father's Welta Weltini (I still have that camera, too).

The print was nice (on "Carton weight" AGFA Brovira), but the negative too unsharp for enlarging beyond 5x7".

 

[brimc76]

I was in my 20's and had been reading up on B&W printing and developing for a few months. Finally made the move to take a beginner's course at a local night school facility where I developed my first film and printed a picture of my girlfriend (now my wife). I still have it and the negatives from that session in one of my filing cabinets.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

In the 4th grade I had a teacher who set up a darkroom in a closet, and I remember making photograms on single-weight paper and then later printing negatives that I had brought in.

A few years later my family moved into a house with room for a darkroom, and I remember my grandfather bought me a darkroom starter kit that had a terrible plastic horizontal enlarger with a plastic lens--the veritable Holga of enlargers--a daylight film tank, three 4x5" trays, a couple of those Kodak three-packs of chemistry, a thermometer, a couple of film clips, and a 25-sheet pack of 4x5" Velox. I made some really flat prints. I still have a few negs in the files from that time.

 

[photomc]

Well, let's see...first print would have been in college, b&w photo class - was just out of the Army where I had done some film, but no printing. What I remember most is there were enlarger stations set up all over this large room, people moving about in the sub-dark and walking over to this large set of trays with dev., stop, fix and wash..it was such a rush to watch each print develop...everyone in the room would just disappear. Funny, that rush has never stopped. It was at least 25 years between that class and the next time I was able to print. What I would not give to let everyone have that feeling of seeing THEIR print develop for the first time....

 

[removed account4]

i don't remember exactly what my first prints were - but my parents moved recently and no longer were assigned caretakers of all my stuff. the first photos i took were with a mickeymouse camera - you pulled the ear down and it shot 126(?) cartridge film ( CLICK ). i found a portrait i took of my brother ( i think it was my first) - he must have been about 9-10 and i was about 5-6 - i can still hear him saying " hurry up and take the picture!". first print i made was in 10th grade photo class. i think it was a shot down at the ground. i think it is in the garage in a big brown box with all the other artifacts from my childhood.

 

[dr bob]

Christmas 1945, after WWII, received a large package by mail from my Uncle. I was determined to open it first, disregarding my parent's encouragement to open their smaller package. The large package contained three small trays and some yellow packs called Kodak Tri-packs, and a rather large metal box with an internal light bulb and a glass top. I was rather disappointed and confused. Then I opened the smaller box - an Ansco box camera + film.

First exposures were the Christmas tree and presents and other family stuff. Development was done by see-sawing the Kodak Verichrome ortho film through the chemicals in the trays under a very dim red lamp.

The first print - ever - on Azo paper was terrible over exposed (read black). Next few were ok - blurred, over/under exposed et c. but I was as happy as the first day of summer vacation, as well as my parents, because now they would not have to let me "play" with their old Kodak Tourist folder (which was stolen by movers in 1993.

My first enlargement was on a still life I made for the high school annual. Got a prize for it. I'll try a scan and post in my personal gallery.

Truly, dr bob.

 

[Thomassauerwein]

My first prints: Little marching men on top of, around and under wild mushrooms growing in the backyard of a house my wife and I rented at the time. The images turned out completally surreal and I was Addicted after that. (to photography not photographing mushrooms)

 

[Jorge Oliveira]

I'm not sure if it was my first print - but I still have a very old print, made by 1967/8 (I started printing after 20).
It was taken with my first 'decent' camera (not Brownie class), a Yashica rangefinder, 24x30cm enlargement.
It's a backlit warship, taken while I was in a ferry boat.

One of the reasons I started printing was that I've never liked small size pictures.

Jorge O

 

[glbeas]

My first print was done in the bathroom, contact printing under a small chunk of glass on Azo or Velox paper, don't remember which. I used a red lensed flashlight for a safelight and small plastic storage boxes for trays. I dip processed the verichrome in Dektol and the made the prints in the same solution after diluting it 1 to 1. They were quite contrasty but looked good. The subject? Girls of course, a snapshot of Pam and Linda Flippo I took at school.

 

[Annemarieke]

My first print was done in photo college, during my third darkroom lesson. I fell instantly in love with it!

The print was a portrait of my niece, then 1 year old, which is still cherished by my sister.

 

[veriwide]

My first print was done in a photography class at Camp Cherrio, a YMCA afilliated summer camp in the mountains of North Carolina. I was probably 9 or 10. They turned us loose around the camp with Kodak Instamatics shooting b/w. We learned how to develop and print the film, we thought it was pretty cool getting to break opent the 126 film cartraiges. I won the award for best photo. It was a shot across the valley from the camp of the granite face of Stone Mountain, NC. I still have the print, and the negatives.

 

[e_joyner]

Sean,

My memory is pretty useless too, but seeing as my first print was only a little over a year ago....

A silhouette of my cousin, a mule skinner (trainer for all you non-rednecks, LOL) who with his long scruffy beard resembles a mountain man or one of the members of ZZ Top, whichever you can identify with, and his mule, Cupcake. I was nearly ready to pull my hair out, with all the things I did wrong! Including loading the negative upside down in the carrier...DUH!!! But when I got it 'right' and that baby came to life in the tray...I've been hooked ever since! An absolute love affair. I gave the print to him, and it is hanging in his dining room. It's not only my first print, but by far, still my favorite.

~edye