: One Section
This section is devoted to traditional darkroom technique. For black
and white photographers, the darkroom is the site of at least half the
action. What shade of gray do you want your subject's face to be?
This is the kind of artistic decision that a commercial lab technician
can't make for you. Even if you have found a good lab, doing the
darkroom work yourself means that you'll get much faster turnaround on
Why bother with chemicals, plumbing and wrinkled fingers when you can
do it all digitally? The user interface of paper and enlarger is hard
to beat. Direct manipulation of light and development time can be
easier and less frustrating than struggling with a mouse, performing
system administration on PCs, waiting for CPUs, disks, and printers to
grind away. Plus there is the social element of darkroom work.
Photographers go out into the field alone but often come back together
to community darkrooms where they can view each others' work.
For success in the darkroom it is good to start with a solid
understanding of photographic fundamentals. So make sure that you
Photographic Materials and Processes (Stroebel; Focal Press) under your
belt. More practical day-to-day advice may be found in
Monochrome Darkroom Practice : A Manual of Black-And-White Processing
and Printing (Coote; Focal Press).
If you're thinking about building a darkroom into your home, The
New Darkroom Handbook (Demaio; Focal Press) is useful.
For younger photographers or those intimidated by science and
technology, we recommend Bernhard J. Seuss's Mastering
Black-And-White Photography : Advanced Camera and Darkroom
Sadly, so few individuals do color darkroom work that there aren't
many practical books on the subject. It is probably best to take a
class or serve as an apprentice to a printer in a commercial lab.
And, of course, color work is more easily done digitally.
Photo at top right by Philip
, taken with a Rollei
camera on Ilford F film.