In my quest for studio perfection I decided I should like to upgrade my ultra violet exposure unit.

Those familiar with alternative photographic processes will be aware that a UV light box is a pretty common tool. It is used to expose whatever you're printing onto/with to UV light which when passed through a negative onto a pre-prepared light sensitive surface can produce an image.

My own UV box was okay. I built it myself and it had been slowly upgraded and tweaked over the last six months and did a decent enough job. It had a vacuum driven contact frame which I was very proud of and could hold a sheet of paper up to 600mm square. the only thing I wasn't happy with was the exposure times, which were a very lazy 25minutes that impacted upon my work-flow and rather stressed my vacuum pump.

With this in mind I began looking into how to improvements. My initial idea was to increase the amount of UV florescent tubes from 6 to 14 and increase power and efficiency by over-driving the tubes and using modern high efficiency ballasts. However before I did this a fairly new technological advance, namely ultraviolet LEDs caught my eye. Having found that you can buy them, ready-to-go, on a 5m long ribbon I decided to buy a length and jury-rig a test. The results from this rough test were surprising - a very good and even exposure in less than ten minutes. Hearted by this I shelved my UV tube ideas and set out to build an LED based unit.

I purchased an extra 5m of the LED ribbon and and set about cutting it and attaching it to a white foamex board.

Once finished I had a UV array consisting of in excess of 640 LEDs

Whilst housing the new LED panel I took the opportunity to improve my existing UV unit box, slimming it down and generally tidying it up. I fitted out the inside with white foamex to more effectively reflect the light and moved the vacuum pump so it could be mounted externally to prevent heat soak into the vacuum frame and stop it blowing dust around inside the box.

For added ease of use I also integrated a timer unit, which allowed me to pre-select a time, hit the start button and let it go.

So how is it? ...

All in all I'm very pleased. It's a much neater set-up and a dream to use. It runs cool and uses less power. The only issue I've found is that the LEDs seem to be producing a slightly lower contrast image. I assume this is due to the longer wavelength of emitted by the LEDs compared to the UV tubes (405nm against 375nm), though I'm not sure of the physics involved, but I should be able to compensate for that.

Here's a little vid of it running.

UPDATE. Surprisingly the move from tubes to LED has meant that I have had to produce new Photoshop adjustment curves for the printing of my digital negatives. I can only put this down to the manner in which the longer wavelength UV light emmitted by the LEDs penetrates the film and ink of the printed negs. However once the adjustment has been made it is all working great.

As I progress with my platinum printing, I'm beginning to find that the longevity and rare nature of platinum is an attractive property that lends itself to reproducing images that are very dear to people's hearts. I suspect it is why I have already had a number of commission from people for plaitinotypes of images, of important events , loved-ones etc., despite only recently working in the medium. Some prints have been given as presents, some kept as memento's.

Perhaps in an age of digital imagery, and photo albums disappearing with the loss of a smartphone, it is more important than ever to preserve images of things that really matter to us in a tangible way that will last and we can hold in our hands and share with others.

Two of the three above images were mine however that didn't seem to matter. I still found a great deal of joy in trying to make the best print I possibly could, knowing how much it mattered to somebody now, and how much it could come to matter generations to come.

Well after going through six months of construction, testing, improvements and a lot of costly raw materials I have finally got my platinum printing studio up to a standard I'm (fairly) happy with. Suffice to say, if I'd know how much work was involved in doing it I may have never started.

To give a little recap. I have studio space at Ebor Studios in Littleborough, Lancashire. A lovely little creative hub which I am fortunate to share with a great bunch of fine artists and designers.

In order to produce platinum prints or platinotypes you do not need a darkroom as you do in traditional silver printing but you do need a great deal of related (and costly) equipment.

Firstly I decided to build my own sink.

Then I had to construct a ultra violet exposure unit - with a fully working vacuum driven contact frame (I'm very proud of this!)

I also had to build a print washer and stock up on all manner of other bits and pieces such as: pipettes, cutting mats, timers, brushes, specialist paper, distilled water, and not to forget the key (but expensive) chemicals imported from America.

After all that was done I had to then start to master the delicate art of the platinum print. That is a story in itself, which I shan't bore you with right now, just suffice the say it's a path with plenty of pitfalls. But all's well that ends well, I now have a fully working platinum printing studio, I know far more than I did when I started it and am greatly looking forward to what I can do with the medium and where it may take me.

I'm just working on revamping my website with a view to updating the content to include my platinum printing work. Something that has kept me so busy in the past year I've added absolutely nothing on my the site. So apologies if things seem to randomly move around from time to time - it's just me wrestling with the content.

Bob.

It's not often I buy photo books, but today I bought a book that I will treasure. 'Todmorden People' is a book chronicling a bygone age in the small town or Todmorden, West Yorkshire though the photographs of Roger Birch and compiled by his son Daniel.

A lecturer, Roger Birch ran the graphic design course at Hopwood Hall College when I attended in the late eighties and it was through Roger that I was first introduced to photography and taught darkroom skills. Looking back I think it was a pivotal moment in my life as photography has been an abiding passion of mine ever since.

I hadn't seen Roger since leaving college though I did often wonder what he was up to and wished I could find his whereabouts so I could have a chat and thank him personally. However this was not to be as I learnt that Roger had passed away suddenly in 2013.

So today I did the next best thing. I met his son Daniel, bought the book, and told him how Roger had inspired me. I imagine I'm not the only one.

The book itself is full of wonderful images depicting scenes from different times and very tender portraits and I would rate Roger alongside of my favourite photographers. The contains a forward by Martin Parr who also knew Roger.

The book can be bought from http://www.todmordenalbum.co.uk/

February 2013. "In summer, Venice is torrid, stuffed to the gills with the 18 million tourists who overwhelm it each year, clogging its bridges, swelling its vaporetti, vastly outnumbering the famously grouchy residents and making the city seem like one big floating Disneyland — a perverse metaphor for the future of Italy, if not all of Europe, a place that has staked its future on selling an image of its past and may yet be destroying itself in the process." RACHEL DONADIO, The New York Times .

“In winter you wake up in this city, especially on Sundays, to the chiming of its innumerable bells, as though behind your gauze curtains a gigantic china teaset were vibrating on a silver tray in the pearl-gray sky [...] You fling the window open and the room is instantly flooded with this outer, peal-laden haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers.” JOSEPH BRODSKY, Watermark.