New York · on film · since 2011
Shoot it on the street. Print it in the dark.
Black-and-white street photography workshops with Ida Brandt. Six people, two rolls of film, one morning on the Lower East Side, and a night in the darkroom making your own prints.
Next walk · Sat Dec 5 9:00 am ET · Lower East Side + Chinatown $285 with the darkroom night · Book- Film only
- Six people a walk
- Your own prints, on fiber paper
- Loaner cameras, free
- All times Eastern
New York is already black and white. You wait for the light.
Color tells you what a street looks like. Black and white tells you what the light is doing to it: the fire escape drawn across the brick at 9 am, the stripes under the bridge at noon, a gray January sky over an empty boardwalk.
On a Silver Street walk you shoot film, slowly, with a camera set once and then forgotten. Five days later you are in the darkroom, and the morning comes up in the tray in front of you.
The walks
Three walks. One darkroom.
Every walk is for six people at most and includes your seat at the next Thursday’s darkroom night, where you develop the film you shot and print your best frame.
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1:30Orchard St, 9:40 am · f/8 · 1/500 01
Lower East Side + Chinatown
Saturdays · 9:00 am to 1:00 pm ET
Fire escapes and their shadows on Orchard Street, the Saturday market crowd on Grand Street, and the stripes of light under the Manhattan Bridge at the hour they fall across the sidewalk.
Two rolls of film · the Thursday darkroom night · coffee and dumplings
$285a photographerBook this walk
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1:45Platform, 11:20 am · f/2.8 · 1/15 02
Underground
Sundays · 10:00 am to 2:00 pm ET
The F train from Delancey Street to the end of the line. Platforms where daylight comes down through the sidewalk grates, empty cars at the far end, slow shutter speeds as the train comes in.
Two rolls of film pushed to 1600 · a subway ride · the Thursday darkroom night
$285a photographerBook this walk
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2:00The boardwalk, 11:05 am · f/11 · 1/250 03
Coney Island in winter
Sundays, January to March · 10:30 am to 2:30 pm ET
The boardwalk under snow with the rides shut, gulls over an empty beach, the pier and its one fisherman. The quietest New York there is, and the best gray skies of the year.
Two rolls of film · hot cider on the boardwalk · the Thursday darkroom night
$310a photographerBook this walk
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1:30Gowanus, 8:52 pm · fiber paper · grade 3 +
Darkroom night only
Thursdays · 6:30 to 10:30 pm ET · Gowanus, Brooklyn
Already shooting film? Bring up to three exposed rolls of black-and-white. You develop them, I stand beside you, and you leave with negatives and your first fiber prints.
Chemistry · ten sheets of 8×10 fiber paper · eight people at most
$120a nightBook a night
The sheet on the darkroom door
Coming dates
Times are New York time (ET, UTC−5). The last column is the same moment in your own time zone, so you can book before you land.
| Date | Walk | Meet, ET | Your time | The light | Places |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu Nov 19 | Darkroom night | 6:30 pm | 6:30 pm ET | Safelight only | 3 of 8 left |
| Sat Nov 21 | Lower East Side + Chinatown | 9:00 am | 9:00 am ET | 29° · long shadows | 2 of 6 left |
| Sun Nov 22 | Underground | 10:00 am | 10:00 am ET | Grates and platforms | 5 of 6 left |
| Sat Dec 5 | Lower East Side + Chinatown | 9:00 am | 9:00 am ET | 27° · long shadows | 3 of 6 left |
| Sun Dec 6 | Underground | 10:00 am | 10:00 am ET | Grates and platforms | 6 of 6 left |
| Thu Dec 10 | Darkroom night | 6:30 pm | 6:30 pm ET | Safelight only | 5 of 8 left |
| Sat Dec 12 | Lower East Side + Chinatown | 9:00 am | 9:00 am ET | 27° · long shadows | Full · waitlist |
| Fri Jan 1 | Coney Island, New Year’s Day | 10:30 am | 10:30 am ET | The 1 pm plunge | 4 of 6 left |
| Sun Jan 10 | Coney Island in winter | 10:30 am | 10:30 am ET | 27° · gray sky likely | 6 of 6 left |
| Sun Feb 14 | Coney Island in winter | 10:30 am | 10:30 am ET | 36° · sea smoke possible | 6 of 6 left |
The noon sun over Manhattan stands under 30° from November to January. That is why winter is the best season for the walks: long shadows all day, and the light through the bridge girders comes all the way down to the sidewalk.
Sat Dec 5 and Thu Dec 10, in Eastern Time
One morning on the street. One night in the dark.
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Seward Park, coffee and film
We meet by the park’s Essex Street side. Two rolls each, loaded in the shade, and one rule for the morning: f/8, focus set at ten feet, and stop thinking about focus.
Sunny 16, one stop over · f/8 · 1/500
1:308:45 am -
Orchard Street, the fire escapes
The low sun throws the iron across the brick in diagonals. You learn to wait at a corner until someone walks into the frame, and to let them walk out of it.
f/8 · 1/500 · 400
1:309:15 am -
Grand Street into Chinatown
The Saturday market at its busiest. The camera stays at your waist and you shoot without looking through it: people never notice, and the frames come back tilted and alive.
From the hip · f/11 · 1/250
1:4010:20 am -
Under the Manhattan Bridge
The best twenty minutes of the day: sun through the girders in stripes on the sidewalk. Expose for the light and let the shadows go black. Then wait for someone in a long coat.
Meter the bright stripe · f/11 · 1/500
1:3011:40 am -
Dumplings, and the F home
Roll two rewinds over lunch. I write your name on both canisters and they come with me until Thursday, unopened. The last frames happen on the train.
f/2.8 · 1/30 · pushed to 800
1:5012:40 pm
Five days laterThursday, 6:30 pm, a shared darkroom in Gowanus
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Lights out
Film onto steel reels in total darkness, by feel. You practice with a dummy roll and your eyes shut first, and then you do it for real with your Saturday inside.
Zero light · six minutes a roll
Total darkness · 0 lux -
Develop
Nine and a half minutes at 68°F. Agitate the first thirty seconds, then ten seconds every minute. Stop, fix, wash, and the negatives come out of the tank into the light.
9:30 at 68°F · fix 5:00 · wash 10:00
9:307:00 pm -
Pick a frame, make a test strip
Each of you picks one frame with the loupe. Then a strip of paper under the enlarger, exposed in four-second steps, so you can see which one is right.
Grade 3 · f/8 · 4s steps
1:308:00 pm -
The print in the developer
Under the safelight the paper is blank for twenty seconds. Then the shadows come, then the coat, then the girders, and at a minute and a half it is yours. Everyone goes quiet the first time.
Fiber paper · 1:30 in the developer
1:308:40 pm -
On the line
Fiber prints dry overnight on the line. You take your negatives home tonight; the prints are yours on Saturday at the park, or I mail them flat.
Dry overnight · flattened in the press
dry10:15 pm
Try it before Thursday
Make a test strip
Before every print you expose one strip of paper in steps and develop it, then choose. Pick a time and the whole print is exposed for it.
4 seconds. Far too light. The brick is a gray mist and nothing is black.
8 seconds. Still thin. The fire escapes are there, but the shadows are gray, not black.
12 seconds. Close. The sky holds, the shadows are nearly there.
16 seconds. Right. Black shadows, white sky, and the brick between them. This is the print.
20 seconds. Heavy. The shadows block up and the windows go dark.
24 seconds. Too dark. A November afternoon has turned into night.
Prints from the walks
Every one came up in a tray
Mine, and two by guests on their first roll. Every frame here is for sale as an 11×14 fiber print, $240, printed by hand in Gowanus and signed on the back. Text me the caption.
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1:3007 · Grand Street market, 10:52 amf/11 · 1/250 · from the hip · Ida 11×14 fiber · $240
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1:3008 · F train platform, 11:24 amf/2.8 · 1/15 · pushed to 1600 · Ida 11×14 fiber · $240
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1:3009 · Coney Island, January, 12:10 pmf/11 · 1/500 · yellow filter · Maren K., guest 11×14 fiber · $240
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1:3010 · Bowery in the rain, 6:05 pmf/2 · 1/60 · pushed to 1600 · Ida 11×14 fiber · $240
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1:3011 · Uptown F, last car, 1:10 pmf/2.8 · 1/30 · pushed to 800 · Desmond A., guest 11×14 fiber · $240
Your guide
Ida Brandt
The winter I turned fifteen I took my grandmother’s camera to Coney Island and shot a whole roll of the boardwalk under snow.
The drugstore printed it so gray it looked like fog. My art teacher at Seward Park High School took me into the school darkroom and showed me how to print it myself, and I watched a gull come up out of nothing in the developer. That was 1989, and I have been in a darkroom most weeks since.
I printed for other photographers at a lab on Broome Street for fourteen years. When it closed in 2011, I started walking people around the streets I grew up on and teaching them to print what they shot. The darkroom in Gowanus is a members’ darkroom; we take it over on Thursday nights.
I keep the groups to six because that is how many people I can see on a sidewalk without turning around. And I still shoot every walk with you.
Ida
- 1989first print, a gull at Coney Island
- 6photographers a walk, at most
- 3,100rolls developed by guests since 2011
Before you come
What to bring, and what not to worry about
- A film camera, or none
- Any 35mm camera with a working shutter. No camera, or only a phone? Borrow one of my eight loaners, free, loaded and checked the night before.
- Nothing to know about film
- Most guests have never loaded a roll. By 9:30 you will have stopped looking at the settings, because there are only two.
- Film is included
- Two rolls of 400-speed black-and-white per walk, plus the chemistry and ten sheets of 8×10 fiber paper on Thursday.
- Shoes for four miles
- Flat sidewalks and subway stairs, at a slow street-photographer’s pace with stops every few blocks.
- Gloves with free fingertips
- Winter mornings near the river are colder than the forecast. A hat, layers and a small bag that closes.
- A subway fare
- Tap a card or your phone at the turnstile. Underground and Coney Island include a ride; the first fare is yours.
Rain is good. Snow is better. Walks go ahead in both. Below 15°F or in a thunderstorm, your walk moves free.
Reviews
5.0 from 212 photographers
“I booked it from Lyon the night before my flight and the times were already in my time. Saturday on the street, Thursday in the dark, and I flew home with six prints in my suitcase.”
Élise R.Lyon, France · Lower East Side, October“I came with only my phone. Ida handed me a camera, set it once, and said ‘now forget it.’ My print of the bridge is framed in our hallway.”
Marcus T.Phone shooter · Lower East Side, November“Twenty years of digital and a test strip humbled me in four seconds. Best $285 I have spent on photography.”
Priya N.Working photographer · Underground, September“Coney Island in January with five strangers and hot cider. Nobody on the boardwalk but us and the gulls.”
Tom W.Coney Island in winter, January
Where
Meet at Seward Park
Saturday walks start at Seward Park on the Lower East Side: the F to East Broadway, or the F, J, M and Z to Delancey Street–Essex Street.
Underground starts on the F platform at Delancey Street. Coney Island meets at the Stillwell Avenue station, end of the D, F, N and Q. The darkroom is in Gowanus, a short walk from the F and G at 4th Avenue–9th Street; the door code comes with your booking.
Questions
Before you book
What if it rains or snows?
We go. Rain makes the streets shine and snow is the best thing that can happen to a black-and-white photograph. Below 15°F or in a thunderstorm, your walk moves free to the next date, or your deposit comes back.
I have never shot film. Is that all right?
Most guests haven’t. I set every camera to two settings at the park, and you spend the morning looking instead of fiddling. Six people at most, so nobody waits.
Do I have to come back on Thursday?
The darkroom night is the second half and it is included, but if you are leaving town I develop your rolls myself and mail you the negatives and two prints. Tell me when you book.
Will you photograph strangers’ faces?
We photograph the city as it is, in public, and we are polite about it: from behind, at a distance, in the light. If someone asks you not to, you don’t. Children are never the subject.
How does the deposit work?
$85 holds your place on a walk ($40 on a darkroom night) and comes off the price. The rest is paid at the park. You can move once, free, up to a week before.
I am flying in. What time zone are the times?
Every time on this page is New York time, Eastern (ET, UTC−5 in winter). Where your own time is different, it is shown beside it.
Book
Hold a place
Pick a walk and a date. $85 holds each place and comes off the price; Ida texts you the meeting spot, the forecast and a one-page settings card the week before. Every time is New York time.
Lower East Side and Underground $285 · Coney Island $310 · darkroom night $120 · film and the darkroom included
- 1Service
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- 3Details
This is an example website made by Humfrid, so nothing was booked and no card was charged. On a real one, the deposit is paid right here and the date is yours. Get a website like this