Photography 
1 Comment Days of Darkroom
This weekend involved some madness (and it’s not over yet!). Friday morning I spent about two hours around Pulaski square shooting four negatives (yes, that is an average of two negatives per hour). Went back out in the afternoon for a few more hours and shot some reflections on Broughton street. That was a somewhat bad idea because between the big photo box (that’s the camera) and my photo cape, we attracted quite a lot of attention together. All Rachel wants is to be discreet. Subtle. This camera doesn’t allow for that. I had several people approach me with bewilderment, enthusiasm, admiration, amusement, and possibly a mix of these. One man was intoxicated. Eeeek.
Then I spent a grand total of seven hours at Bergen on Saturday while it poured rain outside developing all those negatives by hand and making contact sheets. The coolest part? Turning on the lights after the first two minutes of fixer to see that my negatives looked okay! And seeing my first contact sheet with my friend Megan on it. I rarely take portraits, so I figured the first week would be the best time to try! Amazingly, she didn’t blink even with the one-second-long exposure.
I am somewhat disappointed that none of the shots are of excellent caliber, but I’m glad I didn’t ruin all ten pieces of film! Just two. Working with a light meter and doing all this math… it’s going to take some getting used to.
I am most pleased with the top negative on this page – the reflection of the man walking by. I’m also liking these two a lot:
What’s neat about these negatives is that they feel like my first real photographs. Sure, I’ve taken plenty of pictures throughout my lifetime – on everything from underwater disposable cameras to my Grandpa’s Polaroid camera to an assortment of digital cameras. But these 4×5 negatives… this is not something a person off the street could pick up and run with. This is some difficult stuff. I feel like a mad scientist – carting around all my instruments, recording all my measurements, then hauling it all off to the darkroom to be alone with the chemistry and the timer. We learned in my 20th Century art class about one of the first major photographs – taken in 1839 by Daguerre. Just the fact that we can pinpoint when he took his first photograph – and which negative was his first! That boggles my mind – knowing how many pictures I have taken in my lifetime. (A lot has changed between 1839 and 2010.) But this experimenting I’m doing in Large Format class… I feel a little like Daguerre and the others who came before him did. NOT that I’m making ground-breaking discoveries. But I am involved with the materials and processes at such an intimate level – I am truly beginning to take control of my art now. My camera is just a box. It does nothing but provide the mechanical aspects through the lens, the shutter, and the bellows in order for me to capture my image on a giant piece of film. This is not a “smart” box like today’s digital “take-my-picture-for-me” cameras. It has no brains. It is empty inside.
Hopefully by the end of this quarter we will be a better team. As I learn to operate the thing properly and use it to the best of my abilities to craft the images as I see them.