Ahhh, I love the smell of the darkroom in the morning or at night for that matter. However, I do know it is not an environmentally friendly hobby. Alas, I had to leave my beloved enlarger behind in the last move, so have not done any darkroom work for five years now. But, one of the things I tried to show my students, in the Chemistry of Photography class, was that there were a few environmentally friendly alternatives. One was to develop using fresh Mint leaves. The ones from the store do not work nearly as well as the leaves right out of the garden.
Chemical developer, Catechol, can irritate your skin, respiratory and digestive tracts and can be replaced with an alternative of mint leaves and Bicarbonate of Soda. I did not do any in-depth experiments with it and can only find one photo that I did develop with Mint leaves. It is very light.
The mint and bicarbonate developer must be used while it is still warm, or kept warm. You do need fresh from the garden mint leaves. You boil approximately one liter of water and add a large handful of fresh mint leaves. Add two rounded Tablespoons of Bicarbonate of soda to this and boil for approximately twenty minutes. Even though you must use it warm, I have read that it will keep up to 24 hours.
You still need to fix the print. I could never find an environmentally friendly alternative to fix.
Beside getting students to think about environmental alternatives, and this was about seven years ago, there was a certain satisfaction in the “Ehew” factor. For some reason, mint leaves floating in warm water seemed to gross them out. I never took the time to strain it.
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Do you have any more environmental and children friendly photographic alternatives? Any tip is extemely welcomed.
This has been probably ten years ago, so Googling may bring up more now, but the Mint Leaves Developer was all I came up with. Sorry.
Thanks but yours is one of the most unusual bits of information I found on the web after a lot of hours of search. A lot.
There is another two environmental friendly developers – instant coffee and L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Yes, the coffee and baking soda formula are good negative and positive developer. If you try it with paper you’ll get very fine sephia like toning too. With negative, developing time is very long at 20˚C, about 30min or longer. Vitamin C is good developer in combination with soda. Here is the external link with sample photos:
http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=17
http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=20
There is another (almost) environmental friendly developer with paracetamol (4-acetamidophenol ), vitamin C and sodium hydroxide. Works like Agfa Rodinal at 20˚C and in same dilutions.
If you interested google-it and you’ll find several recipes…
Cheers!
Just to add about fixing…
) Depending of the temperature, fixing with sea water lasts about half an hour with water replacing every few minutes… Fixing agents are probably carbonates and tracing sulfite/bisulfite anions.
There is the way to fix negative with sea water. I found that formula in very old book from 1909. Some German book, but translated into Serbian (by the way, thats my country
Cheers!
Thank you Ivan, from Serbia. That is interesting. If I lived near the ocean I might give that a try. It would be fun to set up a tent on the oceans edge and experiment.