Photographer/Studio Owner John Wilson

I use to own and operate a custom black & white photo lab with a couple of other portrait studios I owned in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My photo lab was called Creative Darkrooms for the sake of anyone reading who might remember.  I prefer my digital photo lab now.

Serving professional photographers all over the United States. I'm a stickler about printing true black & white images. Back then in my film and chemical days, I was printing with Aristo cold light enlarger heads. The Aristo enlarger heads didn't put out heat which would often cause a film negative to buckle under traditional enlarger light causing focus issues on paper. Also the Aristo light minimized the appearance of dust specks on prints.

Printing color film on Kodak Panalure photo paper and on a variety of multi-contrast b&w papers from various manufacturers. Ansel Adams and the zone system were my heroes. Today, my goal is creating black & white photographic prints with all eleven zones between the whitest whites to the blackest of blacks truly represented where possible. Real B&W. I do NOT like so-called B&W photographs which are muddy zones of grey with no clean whites anywhere to be found.

Also still operating my photography business at the time as Wedding Photographics.  Shooting with two Pentax 645 medium format film cameras.  Must have shot well over 500 film weddings before moving to Chattanooga.

Creative Darkrooms I operated while also working as a wedding photographer.   I continued Creative Darkrooms while I was also employed by MasterPortrait Studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  I definitely prefer my digital photo lab I now operate.

No more storing gallons of distilled water to mix my liquid photo chemicals for processing films.  I preferred distilled water to protect the films from various impurities in tap water.  Especially any high iron content.  E6 for processing Ektachrome slide film.  C-41 for negative films.  Various powder and liquid B&W chemicals.  Testing various mixing ratios, processing temperatures and times with various films to get certain image characteristics.  Working with various brand multi-contrast black & white photo papers and working with various processing temperatures and processing times to achieve certain image results.  Those were the days.  Now, with digital, it's a lot less headaches and less time consuming, tedious and easier to get the image results I want.  The color enlarger and the tabletop print processor below were my main equipment.  I also home-built a vacuum easel mounted on wall for 20" x 24" printing.