Using a Press in Photography Print Making

Video Transcript

"So the first step that I want to do with my press is I want to heat it up. Sometimes before I come into the darkroom, or I start getting work together and I know that I'm going to be pressing prints that day, I turn the press on right away. Traditionally, these presses take about twenty-five minutes to heat up. You want to make sure your press is heated up to about three hundred and fifty to three hundred degrees. So this baby is hot. I have had different types of burns all over my arms over the years by resting down on a hot press. It's a pretty big safety issue. You really, when a press is hot keep it away from anything that can catch fire, any kind of debris that might be around. You just want to make sure that the area is fairly clean. Now using the press is not really that difficult but in some ways there's a couple of different tricks that you need to know so you don't ruin one of your prints. This is really one of the final steps other than matting and framing your print, so it's important to go extremely slow and use caution when you're operating this press."