A bit of the print process for those interested. In the darkroom we have a lot of editorial decisions we can make, a lot more than most people realise!
You may have heard of dodging and burning before from using any image editing suite out there. That's selectively lightening and darkening areas of an image. Well that terminology comes straight out of the darkroom and is all about blocking the projection that comes out of your enlarger to give certain areas either more exposure making them darker (burning) or less exposure, making them lighter (dodging). This is one of the most common darkroom techniques.
But, did you know you could control contrast? When printing we use coloured gel filters to give our projected image certain hues, ranging from yellow to magenta, in a range of 00 (least contrast) to 5 (most contrast). This colour shift interacts with modern photo paper to modify the contrast of the final print. You can even use these filters in conjunction with each other and dodging a burning to selectively add more contrast to localised areas, or to push certain parts of your exposure around like using your curves tool.
For this print, and nearly all prints, I start with a No 2 filter, which is neutral contrast. After taking a look at the first print out I decide to switch to a No 3 for more contrast and then aren't happy with how the shadows in the background have blocked up and reduced detail. I decide to dodge the shadowy background to lighten it and bring that detail back and then reduce overall print time to brighten the whole thing up. The last photo shows the dodge tool I cut out.
The length of the exposure here is 13 seconds. I start with the dodge tool and block the light in the background for a 3 second count. Then I remove the tool and give it a 10 second exposure overall before developing, fixing and washing.