I have had a darkroom in my house since I was a senior in high school. My friend George gave me his Federal enlarger, a custom made timer box he and his dad built (way cool: it turned off the safe light while the enlarger was on, as a precaution against fogging, I guess), and as an added and still treasured bonus, a Yashica 635 TLR, complete with the 35mm adapter kit. That Federal saw me through a few years, and covered up to 120 film. Basic, but it worked well.
When I got into college, I was exposed to large format via the school's 4x5 view cameras. That was so much fun, I ended up buying my Cambo 4x5 view camera. That brought on the need for a bigger enlarger, so I found a used Omega D3, and installed it in my darkroom.
I soon discovered that having my own darkroom was a double edged sword. My professor started grading me to tougher standards than my classmates, because I had unlimited access to a darkroom. Never mind that my schedule as a musician kept me busy enough that I often missed the open lab time at school, so having my own was more necessity than luxury. It's not like I was learning more from him by doing it all myself. Throw in the fact that I liked more contrast than he did, and we have the makings of a classic adversarial relationship. After three semesters of classes with the same guy, I was disillusioned with photography. I gave it one last try by switching from the fine art program to the commercial art program, where I had the best photography class I've ever taken.
The professor was very knowledgeable, and had an easygoing teaching style. He assigned each student different films and papers to buy, and then we all traded with each other, so we got to try a range of products. We learned to use the studio flash system, and played with different processing chemistry. It was everything I ever wanted in a photography class.
The entire time in class, the prof would tell us how when he was in school at Kent State, he would mix his chemicals from scratch, or coat emulsion on different substances, or all kinds of awesome sounding stuff. By the end of that semester I learned the most important lesson of all: I had to transfer to Kent!
That's when I learned that at KSU, Photography is in the Journalism school, not Art. My English grades were not up to snuff for journalism, so I had to bring up my grades before I could get into photography. Well, that didn't work out like I had hoped. My casual attitude, coupled with an incompetent professor, actually earned me an "F" in English Comp. When I asked him what happened, he actually said to me (and I remember it verbatim, because it pissed me off so badly, it ended my college career instantly), "You didn't do what the class required. You wrote your own original essays, instead of quoting from the reading material. The sad thing is, you are the only one in the class that has even a spark of talent for writing, and yet, you got an "F". That's what is wrong with the modern university system."
Here it is 20-some years later, and all I can say is, "Fuck you, Professor."
So, time passes. In the late 90s, I took some pictures of a very pretty singer friend of mine for use on the cover of her demo record that we were working on in my recording studio. I printed some up for her, and we decided my limited talents behind the lens didn't do her justice, so she hired a pro. Alas, nothing ever happened with that demo record, and unless you live in Cleveland, chances are you wouldn't know who she is. Great singer, though!
That was the last time I printed photos in my darkroom. I had only added a darkroom sink and running water a few months before that, and very soon afterward, I was on the road with the Beatle band, and never had time to even mix chemicals, let alone print.
Then my daughter was born. I took time off from the band for that, and it morphed into a year of stay-at-home work for the band, then a year long lay-off, before my substitute remembered he hated the job, and I got called back. During my time off, I re-discovered photography in general, and film in particular. I started processing film again, and of course, the madness of camera purchasing that has inspired these rambling missives, but printing was still a far off dream.
Boxes containing cameras arrived with alacrity, and soon enough I had so much crap piled up in my darkroom, I was lucky to have a clear enough path to the sink for film developing. The enlarger was just sitting there taunting me, buried under lenses with stuck apertures, and a growing collection of cameras that use 126 film. I bought a couple packs of paper from Freestyle, thinking it would nudge me forward, but alas, all I managed was film, then a pass through the scanner, then upload to Flickr. Wet printing was still a dream.
Recently, though, things fell together in my favor. My daughter is old enough now to not need CONSTANT oversight. The band had a couple weekends off, resulting in extended periods at home, so I could apply myself to the task of cleaning and organizing the darkroom. A sizable pile of cameras was handed off to a friend who freelances doing eBay auctions for a cut of the proceeds; one day while our kids were having a play date, he offered to turn some of my extra cameras into money. I took him up on it, and that got me some floor space, and inspiration.
A week of dedicated effort finally paid off. I had all the 126 shooters in a box, where they shall remain until I can devote myself to the problem of re-loading the cartridges. The table with the enlarger was cleared (perhaps the only open, flat surface in the house, although I have been gone for a couple days, so...). Developing trays were washed and ready.
A couple years ago, the band had a gig in New Hampshire. On the drive home, I found a guy on Craigslist that was giving away (!) the last of his darkroom chemicals to whomever showed up wanting them. Much to my stage manager's chagrin, I insisted that we stop by. He lived a mere four blocks from the interstate, after all. From him I got 10 bags of D76, 10 bags of Microdol-X, 4 bags of Dektol, and 6 bags of D11. All old, but powder, after all, and more importantly, free!
So Thursday evening, while waiting for a friend to arrive from California, I set about mixing up the chemicals needed. Alas, the four bags of Dektol from the guy in Boston were all VERY past the due date. The powder was a pronounced brown color, and the addition of water made it even worse. Luckily, I had a more recent bag from the local shop, and that mixed up just fine.
While I waited for the Dektol to cool, I straightened up a bit more, put my daughter to bed, kissed the wife goodnight, and sat down to wait for my buddy to arrive, paging through the last few years of negatives to see which would get the honor of re-opening my darkroom.
He showed up at midnight, as flights from LA tend to do around here, and after getting him a beer, we went into the dark. He was charmingly impressed with the process. He had dabbled in photography in high school, but never in a darkroom. It was like magic to him.
The first thing I did was make a contact sheet of a roll from my Koni-Omega. When I had scanned that roll with my $5 Goodwill scanner, it left a bit to be desired. The contact sheet looked MUCH better. As it showed up on the paper in the Dektol tray, my buddy's eyes bugged out, and he said, "Whoa! Photography!" like he never knew how it actually worked. Kinda fun, actually.
But, this being the first sheet into the bath in 12 years, I HAD to screw SOME thing up. I noticed I had laid the page of negatives down on the paper upside down. Looked good, but reversed.
The second sheet came out great, and I was thrilled with achieving my longtime goal of getting back in the darkroom. Just in time for the band to get busy again!
Being WAY past my bedtime, and with a 9am departure looming, I had to wind things up. But before I did, I wanted to make one print that actually used the enlarger to pass light through a negative. I wanted it to be 35mm, because I just got a good deal on a Nikkor 50 enlarging lens that I wanted to try.
The negative I chose was one that my wife (who has an innate talent behind the lens that dwarfs mine) made of her father at a restaurant on his last visit up north. Now, just before she took this shot, I had snapped a couple of her and my daughter. The window was behind me, light looked good, should be fine, right? Two perfectly exposed snapshots. Story of my life. I handed the camera across the table to my wife. Camera is still on Program mode, so nothing changes. She shoots into the setting sun, and grabs two magnificent shots: one of me, one of her Dad. She makes me nuts....
Anyway, the winning negative was the shot she took of her Dad. The first print revealed a dust speck on his eyebrow, so I did a second pass after blowing off the negative again. There are a couple smaller dust issues, but it printed fine with a 25 second exposure and no contrast filters added.
200 dpi scan of the 8x10 print. Scanned with my $5 HP 4890 from Goodwill.
I can't wait to have time to do more work in the darkroom. After all this time, it might be fun again.
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