Causeway Cycle Club

I finally got round to printing a shot from the Annual Cycle Sportive at the NW200.  It's organised by the Causeway Club (which just happens to meet at the same place as our Photographic Club) and aims to raise funds for the NI Air Ambulance.  Anyway, I wandered down early one morning in May and this was one of the shots that came out of the OM-1 and 50mm lens, loaded with, of course, HP5+.

Some of the Causeway Lads, NW200, 2019.  On Ilford Cooltone RC paper.

Lately I've become a bit obsessed with black borders around my prints.  They're useful at times like the above when the sky is a big mass of nothingness and just bleeds into the edge of the print.  Borders aren't terribly difficult to do but they don't always turn out as straight and neat as they did here.  There are special masking frames which can do them, but they're like hen's teeth and these days probably priced to match.  I did it the cheap way, by cutting a piece of mat board to the appropriate size and then setting the easel blades a tiny bit bigger.  The negative gets exposed as normal then the mat board is placed on top of the print, but pushed tight against two of the easel blades - for example along the left side and the top.  This leaves a narrow gap between the board and the easel blades along the opposite two sides - the right and the bottom in this case.  Then I remove the negative and just expose with white light for a few seconds.  Then the mat board gets moved to the opposite corner and the left and top sides of the border are exposed.  A heavy weight on top of the board helps to prevent light leaking under the mat board into the print.