Do you know any better way to celebrate Friday afternoon? Well, maybe you do, but darkroom printing counts as very good one in my book. Finally time to close the door to outside world, put on some music, dive into dark and watch moments from your past materialize right before you. Magic.
Not easy magic, let me tell you. After about three hours my legs and back hurts! I am hungry and thirsty and a little bit sweaty. But focused and time flies like crazy. The magic just pulls me in and nothing else matters much.
One moment reminded me nicely about why I really like the pure and simple process of darkroom printing. Simple, because it relies on basic things – like light and glass and metal and wood, nothing really sophisticated and fragile. The process is just robust. Unlike computers for example – and here comes my moment. I walked out of darkroom and sit at my computer to choose which negative to print next. And computer just didn’t want to start. This was second time it happened. It starts normally, but sometimes it doesn’t. And there can be million reasons why. Not the laws of darkroom. Laws of darkroom are more fundamental, simple, understandable and friendly. Eventually I realized my silly mistake, turned off that damn thing, put a negative sleeve between my eyes and a bulb and picked a negative like they used to do in the old days. Again – nice and simple and works every time.
This time I wanted to try contrast filters. I made additional “stage” for that for my junk diy enlarger but that didn’t work well. It made frame of one stage projected smaller than the others – no good. Eventually i just slapped the filter right on the negative and it seems to work. I will do more tests with this and familiarize myself with filters more.
One thing that seems a little strange to me is how the pictures seems to change its looks. I am of course aware that picture looks is very much defined by light shined on it. Despite that the power of the change surprises me. It is almost as they are really changing. One moment they are too dark, then too bright, then perfect, then too dark again. I’m amazed. And the range of ways the pictures can be printed amazes me even more.
I think I understand a little bit better what they say about print being performance. And what’s more – even with the picture in my hand I feel like performance isn’t over yet.
