the darkroom: love it, hate it, or spend the rest of your natural life in it.

on our first day of photo class, we were informed that we would be lucky and moving right along if we got one print done per hour. "haha!" we all scoffed, "we've learned how to use the enlarger and do a test strip for density and make a good looking print! in fact, we got four prints done in an hour. what could be so difficult?" enter filters. filters are the magic ingredient to making photography a guessing game rather than an equation. what was science becomes art with the entrance of filters.

i won't bore you with the explanation of what filters do. in order to do that properly, i'd have to tell you everything i've learned in my photo class--you don't want that. i have to salvage the readers i have. all that you need to know, i suppose, is that i've seen (and have been) someone staring at two very similar photograph prints on a white board, hand to mouth in concentration, trying to decide which is superior. this could take thirty seconds or five minutes and a second or third opinion.

it takes ages.

the kicker is, most of that time is spent waiting. waiting for the enlarger to stop putting light onto your hard-earned image (10-30 seconds). waiting for the image to develop (2 minutes). waiting for the image to stop developing (30 seconds). waiting for the image to be impervious to contact with future light (1:30). waiting for the majority of the chemicals to wash off so it can play nicely with skin (1 minute). all that to take the print to correct light, look at it for three minutes, decide what improvements need to be made, and go do it again.

it. takes. ages.

hooray for finals week!