Thomas Joshua Cooper

I have your paper!

Well, the great man himself donated a load of darkroom equipment and sundries to the Inverness Darkroom when he decided to hang up his safe light - and the Darkroom is running a recycling project this year so is distributing some of the rather fine, and very expensive, paper to it’s members. Today I was given a box of 50 sheets of 20”x24” and a box of 100 sheets of 8”x10” - both Agfa brand fibre based paper… this is the stuff that dreams are made of and careers are forged from!

Admitably Agfa stopped making paper some years ago, and this was stockpiled at that time as it was the medium favoured by Cooper… so it is somewhat past it’s best before date. But it will be interesting seeing what I can do with it none the less! And being as it is free it is the perfect opportunity to work with fibre paper rather than resin coated - and really hone my methods - before buying some ragingly expensive fresh stock (the big box is over £400 worth).

Last week we had a masterclass in printing and I am absolutely itching to get stuck in with some darkroom time soon. I want to run a couple of films through to get some new, fresh, negatives to work with as I am starting to get the idea of working film again (it is almost exactly the opposite approach to digital!)

So exciting times!

Less good - my car is not well and requires the services of a body shop to get it back to rights. I am kind of fed up with it now though and think it is time to make some changes - I probably need more work coming in first though so it may be a case of get it sorted out and then trade it in come autumn for something different. I want to stick with electric if I can, and there are some decent options out there for sensible money at the moment! We shall see how everything looks come September though!

21st January 2026