Occupaion: retired photolithographer Interests: photography Biography: All my working life worked in the darkroom in red light when using Orthochromatic Kodak glass negative film and in complete darkness when doing colour separations on Panchromatic film.The gallery camera was at least 6m long with 2 banks of 3-up arch lamps-hot,smoky and smelly.At first, hand developed Kodak glass up to 40x30in.Later Dupont film in rolls,which was cut with scissors to required length,developed in a procesor.The glass negative film was cut with diamond glass cutter.Made all the fancy bond certificates,cheques,and other security work. Used Magnacolour enlargers with pulsed Xenon heads-Very Hot and noisy,to make screen positives using 4 grey screens, to make the 4 screen positives, for the 4 printing colours.Each screen was angled at 15,45 75, and 90 degrees for the black,Red,Blue,+yellow printing plates. The screen positives were taken to a Retoucher, the highest paid and very skilled position in the Repro Section. The screens were made up of Dots.up to 150/inch and the Retoucher had to physically etch the size of dots,for each screen positive to produce the correct Hue and colour,depending on what paper the job was proofed +printed.
There was a long apprenticeship +Art School for all the well paid printing jobs and you had to belong to SLADE.--Society of Lithographic Artists and Process Engravers. And later Scanners and computers were introduced.You could produce a 4colour set in 30mins,instead of 3 to 4 hours.
In the darkroom Camera period the biggest problem was to keep your camera and enlarger square checking the diagonals, down to a miilimiter. Each job had the trim marks placed by the Art Dept.
In the old Glass Neg. period you had to keep your nose about 3 inches away from the caustic developer looking through a magnifying glass especially at the 4 edges and at the E,G,A,letters and the fine ends of each letter so that you would lift up very quickly the large Glass negative out of the developer and into the Acetic Acid Stop Bath to stop development especially when developing Screen Negatives or Positives to get your 5% and 90% Dot as well a perfectly formed 50% chequerboard Dot.

Smells of Chemicals you had to grin and put up with them.
The Good Old Days- Pay was very good-Overtime was 2ble Time. 36 hr wk. At some point in time we worked a 3-day wk. Website: none