The good, the bad and the downright useless

Me at 15, Physics Department Darkroom,
Cardiff University

Many photographers in the past and now, have depended on good technical support. A good technician is worth a lot. I have had the pleasure of working with some of the best and some awful experiences with the worst. I was a photographic technician myself for the first five working years of my life. I was very young and thrown into undertaking important support work for research students at a university, so no room for mistakes or months of work would be ruined. No pressure then! It was an object lesson in understanding what was required without any ambiguity, doing tasks properly and promptly to a high standard and anticipating the various needs. It gave me a great grounding in how to be part of a support team and a lifelong respect for and appreciation of, good technicians. 

Stickle Ghyll, Cumbria

I have always made my own prints and see it as being a seamless section of the whole process. I have also enjoyed learning all the various skills involved and having the maximum control over my work. I also enjoy the alchemy involved, whether it's the chemical or digital kind. However, for all kinds of reasons many well-known photographers have depended on printers for their work and there is no doubt that a good printer is priceless. An understanding of the photographer's work is vital and a sympathy with their style. 

Part of my darkroom chemical shelf

All technicians have their idiosyncrasies but all the good ones I have worked with are fastidious about orderly working methods and consistency. I worked with one who managed to run a very large set of excellent facilities in a university with over 300 students studying photography. How he and his small team did it I don't know. The demands were enormous but everything ran well and chemistry etc. never ran out and equipment always worked. 

Gwynedd, Wales

How different from an earlier experience when I worked as a guest lecturer in a small regional college. The technician there was the most incompetent buffoon that I have ever come across. Everything was constant chaos. Broken and missing equipment, darkrooms in disarray and the chemistry a mess. The students were desperate one afternoon for film developer. There was a queue waiting to process film and he had failed to keep stocks up. He winked at me and said, "watch my secret quick method of mixing developer". He took a 5L plastic bottle and placed it in the sink of a tiny chemical room with no extractor fan. He put a funnel made out of a sheet of stiff A4 paper in the neck of the jug. 

Another part of my darkroom chemical shelf

The next bit is complicated. He turned on the hot tap until it ran almost to boiling point and tipped both parts of the developer powder into the paper funnel; even though it's essential to fully dissolve one before the other. Very quickly he then swung the tap over the funnel, swirling the jug as a sort of attempt at a kind of mixing, while at the same time jabbing at the coagulating powder in the funnel with a wooden ruler to force it down. All this time the powder was blowing up around the room filling it with chemicals. All this had to be completed very quickly before the paper funnel disintegrated. He managed it in about 15 seconds. Quick indeed. What was now in the bottle however, was just a lot of undissolved powder in suspension, in a solution that was about 30 degrees too hot to use. He then went home. The students were distraught. I managed to salvage the situation by spending an hour or so stirring and shaking the solution and then placing the bottle outside in the snow for a while to cool to working temperature so the students could process their films. 

You may think that someone like this had no future. You would be wrong. He is now the chief technician in charge of the photographic department of a major police force. The mind boggles.