‘Traditional’ Photography
Some weeks ago my son phoned and asked how I would describe the photographic process of using a darkroom to make prints using the medium of negatives and prints.
The request came because of the need for him to explain to someone else the pre-digital way of making a photographic ‘ print’.
Some years ago this would have been a fairly easy concept to explain, because the practise of a photographer disappearing into a darkroom and reappearing some time later with a print, bleary eyed and smelling of fixer etc was a procedure that most people understood, even though they did not entirely know what took place in the murkey depths.
I now found myself having to start from scratch explaining what a darkroom was, why it had to be dark and what the devil is a negative? Oh dear!
You put a film in the camera – whats a film? Ah!
You than develope it to get a negative – yeeessss?
The negative then goes into the enlarger – umm, enlarger ?
Oh dear!
Well you have to think of replacing a memory card with a film, which is then processed with liquid chemicals instead of a piece of conversion software, placed in an enlarger instead of another piece of software like PS, which after being exposed to light in a controlled process becomes a paper print which then goes through another set of liquid chemicals, is washed and dried and becomes the print. The latter stage after the PS work is now replaced by a digital printer where all the work is done in daylight instead of a darkroom. Phew!
Its amazing how the expression memory card, conversion software, PS and digital needed no explanation!
Does anyone have an easier explanation of using film in a camera and the darkroom process?
