CAUSE I WAS IN A DARKROOM!!!
At this point in time, my most favorite part of the week is when I get to drive to the Camera Doctor and attend my darkroom class. I love not knowing every single image that’s on my rolls of film. It’s like Christmas every week.
Last week’s class was just an introduction to film photography and the darkroom. It was cool, but I was ready to actually get to work in that darkroom. We were told to shoot one to two rolls of film before the next class. Well… it rained for four or five days straight. I decided I’d take my AE-1 to the big Falcon’s playoff game and capture whatever caught my eye. The characters and spirit and Falcons flare inspired me tremendously. The concept of taking photos at a Falcon’s game is similar to street photography. Sometimes, I asked permission and, other times, I discretely snapped my shutter button. I shot photos of all the folks tailgatin’ and of the actual game. It ended up being a very sad day for the Falcons and for the city of Atlanta. But, at half time, I captured the happy faces of fans who thought the Falcons were going to win. If one were to view my photos, one would not even know they ended up losing.
Anyways, I was a tad anxious about my next class. If you know me at all, I tend to be a worry wart for no reason. I was nervous to see if my negatives turned out. I was nervous for my negatives to be looked at and judged by my classmates and teacher. I was nervous about printing contact sheets. I always start out worrying like this during any new adventure and then… I learn to let it go and enjoy the challenge. My class, this past week, consisted of a 14 year old boy (who was fun to watch and learn from) and a guy that seemed to know exactly what he was doing).
Contact sheet for one roll of film… I took another roll but we could only develop one. Shot with Canon AE-1. Polly Nance. 2013.
My negatives turned out pretty good… some were better than others. Some were slightly underexposed and others were perfectly exposed. We made contact sheets of our negatives (I think I timed mine wrong though cause it didn’t look as good as my negatives). My teacher told me, however, that he was going to show us how to dodge and burn. So, we were to pick a photo that would challenge us (unless we weren’t up for a challenge lol). I chose one that my husband made me take lol. I chose it not really for that reason, but for the pure and simple fact that I didn’t like the shadows on the faces. I wanted to learn how to lighten them up. I knew the photo wouldn’t turn out perfectly, but I loved the photo anyways and desired to learn from it. We only had enough time to print the one photo as a test strip… to see which exposure to use for next week’s class when we get to print our first real prints. Until then, and in the meantime, I’m supposed to shoot two more rolls of film. I’m excited for next week already!!!!
Test strip photo. Shot with a Canon AE-1. Polly Nance. 2013.
On a side note, I have been uninspired to blog over the past few months. I’ve been terrible when I used to look forward to writing my blog posts. This class is changing that. And, I hope to continue to share this journey with all of my readers. Thank you again for sticking with me, while I grow on this photographic adventure and career of mine!
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PEACE, LOVE until my next bloggy-blog post, dear fellow blog-readin’ friends.
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