I've never done any darkroom processing (although I am old enough to have shot film that was just sent off to a lab) but my daughter is going to take a darkroom photography class this year in high school. 🙂 I am wondering if she happens to be in online school during that segment if I am going to have to set up a darkroom in my studio bathroom! 😂 Then I will also have to buy a film camera. I stupidly sold mine when I started digital photography.
There is something....
magical about working in a properly set-up darkroom, moving beyond the fairly straightforward and simple process of developing a roll of B&W film, which indeed can be done in a home bathroom. It's the next steps in the process which can be really breath-taking, especially if one had never experienced this before. It can be so rewarding and yet at the same time frustrating, spending time laboring over a negative in the enlarger, exposing the piece of photo paper to hopefully bring out what you saw and imagined at the time of taking the shot, and now waiting to see if the final results are what were intended. Yes, it can be very frustrating at times when the final results on the paper mean a return to the enlarger and another stab at getting what you really want from that negative. Yes, the chemicals smell and yes, those chemicals can stain whatever clothing one is wearing.....but all of that somehow fades away in importance when standing in the dimly-lit darkroom gently rocking a tray back-and-forth, listening to the photo paper softly knock back-and forth against the sides of the container, and all of sudden it happens: you are watching the image you shot coming to life on what had seemingly been a blank piece of photo paper..... Even if later after the print has dried you realize that, oops, not enough contrast or you overlooked something that should have been corrected while the neg was still under the enlarger, etc., etc......it doesn't take away the experience of watching that image come to life, regardless of how perfect or imperfect it might turn out to be. This is an experience every photographer should have at least once. Working on one's images in the computer in whatever software program is chosen is simply just not the same experience.
I love the convenience, speed and amazing things we can do today with digital shooting and digital post-processing. It's just really cool to run out on my deck and fire off a few photos of Alfred, my favorite GBH, or of a turtle dozing in the sunshine on a log, and come back in the house and pop the SD memory card out of my camera into the card reader connected to my computer and within a few minutes have the images ready for viewing by me and others..... This sure beats the time that it took in the past to go through the process of shooting->developing->analyzing in the enlarger and making adjustments ->printing ->viewing the finished product....
But you know what? Even today, years since I last set foot in a darkroom, I still remember the magic and the mystique of that particular type of experience -- the smells, the sounds, the incredible sense of peace and "being in the moment" as I stood at my tray rocking a slowly developing image and watching it come to life..... even though at the same time I remember the frustration and the smells and having to toss away some t-shirts that just couldn't be salvaged from the stains, etc., etc..... There really is just nothing like being in the darkroom and forging a unique connection with one's own images from start to finish.
I am glad to hear that they are still teaching PHT 101 or whatever it might be called in today's high schools and community colleges, four-year colleges and universities. The darkroom is an experience which teaches an awful lot about photography, not just about taking the photo from the get-go, but moves the student along to the processing of that just-shot roll of film to the point at which one stands at the enlarger and works with the image, and then carefully takes it over to the trays and waits for the magic to happen......and then shares it with the world.
