The WC: It's Not Just For You Know What Anymore

The training continues.
No, not the laziness drills, I'm pretty much world class in that department.
I haven't been in a photographic darkroom in oh, since back in another life and some stuff is slow to remember.
Some stuff is totally new.
Well, new to me anyways:

I took home one of the enlargers from work, no worry it's so old it's been off the books for a while, and believe it or not it fits in the bathroom.
Sort of cramped but workable.
The smaller enlarger will only do 35mm film, I only have one negative holder, while the bigger one will do larger formats like 6x7.
One of the problems with working in the bathroom is I need to seal off the window and it gets pretty warm once I get going.
I've also started messing with sepia toner and well, it's nasty smelling stuff.
Thing is I need the bathroom for there's a lot of rinsing and washing involved.
Sepia?
It's the stuff that gives photographs that brownish look:

That's a contact print, made by laying the 4x5 negative directly on the paper.
The enlarger doesn't handle large format negatives.

Those are scans compared to scans of the an actual print.
I would like the images to be a bit darker, the directions actually say to print darker, but these were just tests anyways.
I did do one night shot:

Which I think came out fantabulously well.
I did more prints and I'll be toning them later.
These do take a bit o'time as you need to bleach the original, rinse, then tone and fix.  The whole process takes oh about fifteen or twenty minutes depending on how well you rinse and wash.
In my case in the bathroom sink and in the tub.
Thankfully water is included in my fees here and you can rinse out more than one at a time.
I've also been collecting some picture frames:

Hitting up the local Goodwill.
I'm gonna start to recycle them and mount some of the work like this:

The walls at the Flat Tire Command Center are all still blank so I got lots of space to hang stuff.
I may even try to put some of the smaller ones up on Etsy and see if they get any attention.
This photography stuff needs to start paying for itself.
If you know what I mean.
In other news, following the lead of our friend Steve A, I too got a new hat.
Make that hats.
More on this later.

Old and Faded

It's the new look!
All this nice and crispy digital stuff is so passé.
Instagram don't you know.
So anyways, I've been on a Mini Quest (MQ) for that Old School Look, MQFTOSL if you are following along at home.
Remember I got this:

Doesn't get much older school than that!
Well okay it does as I got older cameras, but them cameras are sort of high tech old school.
If you know what I mean.
That camera up there, that's like cheapo old school as you can't even focus it; just point and shoot.
Well okay it does have a couple of adjustments, but very minimal.
So then the other day I got these:

Olden days pictures!
Like from the thirties and forties!
Now them pics have a look to them, something I'm finding very difficult to replicate:

Turns out that cheapo camera takes pretty nice pictures!
I mean all in focus and stuff.
Just not getting that look I want.
Unless I do this:

Now that's what I'm talkin 'bout Willis!
Of course I'm not too keen on running the scans through software like this, but the results are pretty cool.
That last picture by the way is from where I used to live when I was shorter.
I forget which mailbox was ours.
Anyways, my MQFTOSL led me in many different directions, but I think I found my cure.
Cure for the Quest (CFTQ!)!
Stay tuned.