Blogging
With the rapidly changing online culture I thought it might be good to jump back into making blog posts. Writing for my site has never been my strong suit.
I’ve been working on a new run of darkroom prints. When I was first learning the ins and outs of film photography and darkroom printing everything was about accuracy. Refinement. We needed those crispy blacks and pure whites to come across the page. Tack sharp focus and oh, is that an art form in itself!
The goal of our prints was that you wouldn’t be able to tell if they came from a lab or from our hands.
I never liked that. That level of perfection. I like the imperfections in everything. The ghost of a process lingering on the page. (Was it really a ghost or improper chemical mixing?)
I like saying it’s the ghost.
Don’t mix it up tho! There are very few things that are more satisfying than making the crispy print, but if that’s all I focus on I lose out on so much.
The last time I started mixing my chemicals I saw that my developer went brown. It’s all I had and I had an idea I couldn’t get out of my head.
So, I used what I had. I kept putting boiling water in the bottom tray to push the temperature in hopes to get some contrast on the page, but I neeeeeded to make the prints. Even if they came out muddy.
I experience that a lot. This compulsion for creation, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the recourses to do it the “right” way.
If I wait, I’ll never do it.
