From the very first time I picked up my Pen EE half frame camera about 15 years ago, I quickly realised this format was much more than 72 frames that hung around in your camera like festering cheese in the back of the fridge.
Immediately I saw creative possibilities for what, in late 2024 and ongoing since then has become over 100 darkroom prints collectively called “Half Framer Stories”. Half Frame Stories really took off as a serious darkroom passion following the purchase of the Pentax 17.
A few weeks back Yant from World Wide Half Frame Photography Day reached out and asked if I could put together a short article with some photos in the lead up to the “big day” looking at my workflow from walking around with the Pentax 17, to making prints in the darkroom.
Following a diagnosis of osteoarthritis in 2024 spent most of my spare mornings of semi-retirement walking 3 -4 miles from my home around local woodland and fields with the Pentax for company, it went with us to Vietnam in February of 2025, then on every trip away in our caravan and, well, was a constant companion.
Walking that same route each day as the light changed and the seasons progressed opened my eyes to how different the “familiar” can be from one day to the next if we just open our eyes and “see”.
Slowly I began deliberately making constructed landscapes of three frames, sometimes combining close ups either side of an infinity frame, or pairing images side by side that I hoped told a story. All of these constructed “in camera” as I knew they would be printed in the darkrooms they had to be side by side and in the right sequence.
Developed rolls were cut into strips to fit inside the oh so clever Paterson proof printer.
Each strip of 6 full frame or 12 half frame images are held in place by little plastic ridges so that you can make more than one contact print without having to manually line up the strips onto the paper then lie glass over to hold it all flat.
I find this very meditative in an odd way.
Once I have a contact sheet I take it into my office and taking my time examine all the frames and remind myself of the stories I was trying to tell at the time of pressing the button. These I mark with a red wax pencil.
Then it’s into the darkroom and mostly I use my Devere 504 as I can either use the four blades in the neg carrier to mask the image to the centre of the 5×7 paper or I use a 3d printed mask insert for triptychs or constructed, three frame “panoramas”.
That’s about it really, I can use the glass inserts in the neg carrier combined with the four masking blades build in or use a 35mm masking frame for the diptychs of a 3D printed 3 frame version.
Andrew
(ed. you can see more of Andrew’s work in last years post here https://half-frameday.com/2025/06/13/meet-the-photographer-andrew-bartram/)
