So the other day (my favourite hockey team have just tragically lost the game so I had to do something!) I finally decided to do my first darkroom photo print. I wanted to do this like last two years I think, but postponed and procrastinated on it because of some weird reasons.
Of course there was many things to learn about and many questions to answer for myself, before I actually kinda had any idea how to do print, so that took some time too.
One of the funny problems I wasn’t sure how to solve was that I didn’t have any darkroom print tweezers (tongs you call them?) and I refused to buy them. Again, because reasons. Like there is no way I’m buying such a simple thing (for that kind of money). Surely there must be a way to DIY them in like three minutes right?
Yet, I had no idea how I was going to create them. I just could not yet solve such a sophisticated and delicate challenge.
I started setting up printing anyway. Just jumped on it. No pressure. I can switch paper in trays with my fingers in the worst case, right?
And then, when I needed it, it came to me nice and easy. It was obvious. Materials was already around me, everything was already around me. All I needed to do was receive an idea and execute it.
So yea, this is how you get ideas, set yourself up in a situation, where it just has to come to you! 100% serious and science backed and everything.
What we have here are two plastic rulers and one half of a cork plug that I had from another project from ages ago. The only thing I had to do with it was tape it together and voilà – the tweezers!
Are they perfect? Nope. Would it be better for me to buy them instead? Maybe. Was it much more fun this way than buying them? Oh yea. Did I test them and did they work? Be damn sure they did.