You will either need to locate the negative to make a new one or, even worse, if there is no negative, the picture will be lost forever. If something goes wrong while you are trying to peel the photo off, the picture could be ruined. We have loads of other helpful photography tips hereįirst and foremost, before you do ANYTHING, make a digital backup of the image. These may or may not work for you so proceed with caution. Just like most everything in life, everyone has an opinion and what worked for me, may not work for you only do what you are comfortable doing with your photos. We had begun a restoration project and soon had beautiful fresh prints from Masterji’s old negatives.I’ve collected the three most common DIY tips from around the web that I found while I searched for my own solution to this problem. Those tough times were captured on this film, and we were the ones responsible for securing this legacy. For me, this was the most nerve-racking process, but I could see from Tarla’s expression it was painful for her to watch too – this was her father’s life work, an Indian immigrant who had refused the menial jobs for migrants to be an artist. This is not an easy process when his medium format film had been clipped from its ‘real’ into a singular 6×6 format, making safe handling and drying without damaging the films emulsion a delicate task. Using a couple of droplets of photo-flow (fairy liquid original) and a little patience, Tarla and I began to first soak then gently wash Masterji’s old film. DARKROOM SOAK PHOTOFLOW ARCHIVEAs with the majority of archives, Masterji’s negatives had not been kept in the most suitable of conditions: Tarla admitted that the archive was chaotic! Through his negatives, though debris was not visible to the naked eye, it had accumulated onto the surface of the emulsion. After the first exposure and development, it was immediately apparent from viewing the first test strips that a thorough cleansing process was necessary. We dusted off her father’s negatives with a soft brush and compressed air, and then tentatively placed the first negative (single cut) into the negative carrier. I was in luck that Tarla is a keen analogue printer. We began to sort through her father’s negatives on the lightbox. His considered assumption turned out to be spot on: whilst handling these rare artefacts, damage was always an ever-present possibility.Ī few months ago, I began working closely with Masterji’s daughter, Tarla, in Coventry University’s darkroom. A friend, the photographic historian Pete James advised that grandpa’s old negatives might print a little ‘soft’. I recently printed my grandfather’s seventy-year-old 35mm panchromatic safety film for exhibition. It is harder than you think, though no job properly done is ever straightforward. This led to a 1962 licence to start the Master’s Art Studio on Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry, which still exists today.Įven though I have been printing my own black and white photographs for thirty years I have little experience of printing from other people’s negatives. Time spent on evening courses at Lanchester Polytechnic and weekend courses with the GEC Photographic Society led to work, including photographing the visit to Coventry of the Indian High Commissioner and then onto portraits of the burgeoning south-Asian community. Unfulfilled with his mundane day-job, Masterji soon sought the company of creatives and struck up a friendship with local studio photographer John Blakemore, who was at the very beginning his own illustrious photographic career. Masterji had been nurturing an interest in photography, bringing with him from India a Box Brownie camera he used as a hobby. This was not Masterji’s future – he had come across the world to make his mark. To earn enough money for food and board he took a factory job, sharing cheap accommodation with his Indian friends. He arrived in the prosperous English city of Coventry to meet up with friends and many other recent migrants from India in 1958. Masterji left his home and job as a mathematics teacher in Ahmedabad, Gujarat soon after India gained Independence from the British. It was not until 2015 I discovered that the diminutive and unassuming figure was Mr Maganbhai Patel, the photographer known as Masterji. DARKROOM SOAK PHOTOFLOW PROFESSIONALSoon after leaving my staff photographer’s position on the local newspaper where I’d been employed for the previous 5 years and with the luxury of in-house film processing no longer a convenient option I began using my local city centre professional colour lab, in Coventry.ĭuring the accumulating hours that I spent in that lab waiting for my 35mm films to process, watching small colour prints dropping from the conveyor belt from the end of the machine, I watched a short Indian man shuffle in through the door of the lab collect a small package of photographs then shuffled back out again.
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