After years away, I rejoined a dark room late last summer. It’s been a very happy return, and full of learning moments. In my few visits so far, I’ve been keeping a notebook on my work: here is a list of what I’ve learned so far.

Get a move on. I enter the dark room, take a deep breath, think about what I’m going to do today, peruse the library of photography books and – no. There’s a lot to do, like mixing processing or developing chemistry, setting up the equipment I’m aiming to use, getting the right negatives to make prints out of. And time always seems limited, so it’s best to get on with it.

Take your time. This may seem like a contradiction, but when developing and printing, it’s best to work methodically and not to cut corners. The things that may take time, like checking the exact aperture on the enlarger, making contact sheets for every negative and having a good look at your results save time in the long run. Taking breaks keeps your energy up; use the time to take progress notes on your work.

Think about paper. I have large matt sheets for making contact sheets. I may not use them again. My fingertips, especially when using the latex gloves for the dark room’s wet area, could barely tell which side was the one for printing on. Most frustrating. Pearl finish is the way to go – for me, anyway.

Music is necessary. (Or maybe not.) Well, this depends. My first regular dark room practise saw my working with headphones connected to my iPod. One dark room I used had BBC6Music on throughout the day, which was very welcome. Here, we have a high end stereo system and a plethora of CDs. Pink Floyd’s Animals works brilliantly. Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life bursts with energy. Other albums had me wondering which track I was on, breaking my concentration on developing. Silence is sometimes welcome. So, swings and roundabouts.

I’m loving this. Being back in the dark room is a delight. It’s been fun to remember techniques I built up and great to be making new prints. It’s also exciting to be thinking about what print making is going to come on 35mm, medium format and large format film, along with which paper and what developing techniques I am going to use in future. Each day spent in the dark room is an extraordinary learning experience. It’s great to be back.