Michael Patey-Ford

All the photographs in my exhibition are made with an SLR medium format film camera or a large format view camera using 120 rollfilm or 5x4inch cut sheet film.

The rolls or sheets of Ilford  FP4 or Delta 100 black and white film are hand processed in the darkroom by me. I then scan the resulting negatives at high resolution on an Epson V700 film scanner.

In Adobe Photoshop, I use a digital workflow of my own devising to precisely replicate the stages of making a traditional darkroom wet print by controlling contrast, dodging and burning.

The finished images are printed onto Epson Traditional exhibition quality, fibre based photographic paper, developed to match or exceed the quality of the finest silver halide paper.

These exhibition prints are made using Epson’s UltraChrome K3 inks. Black and white prints made in this way, can not only match the quality of any darkroom print, but have a projected lifespan, in display conditions, of over 100 years and are now accepted by museums and galleries around the world.