[Leica] Re: Learning to develop and print for myself

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

Amazing stuff Dan,

You are a heretic in that in the year 2000, you have chosen as your first
endeavor into the second half of photography, to use a very old, outdated
process, in a strange, isolated, smelly very dark room.

Please tell us why you picked this old fashioned, wet, smelly method over
the more modern, comfort of a nice desk chair, lights on, no clean-up, can
fix anything wrong with your original, digital method?

Jim (wondering what's going on here  ;-) ) Brick


At 10:01 PM 7/30/00 -0400, Dan Honemann wrote:
>Gang,
>
>My first ever photography class (just a weekend seminar, but lots of
>hands-on experience) has come to an end, and boy was it ever an eye-opener.
>
>First and foremost, to all those of you who encouraged me to learn this end
>of the process, thank you!  And you were absolutely right.  It has already
>begun to shift my perspective in taking photos.
>
>It has also revealed that half--if not more--of the art of photography lies
>in processing and printing.  It's simply unbelievable how much variance and
>flexibility there is in printing the same negative.  And, having said that,
>it's also clear just how important it is to capture as much information on
>that little negative as possible at the time of exposure.
>
>These fledgling experiments with processing my own negatives and printing a
>few 6 1/2 x 9 1/2's have already proven how much better I can do than any
>lab--even the so-called pro labs--as I'm the one who visualized the photo
>when I shot it.  If I depend upon a lab to do the printing, I get someone
>else's visualization.
>
>Finally, I've learned that this end of the equation is as much fun as the
>other; time seems to evaporate in the darkroom the same way it does when I'm
>street shooting.  There is no one shooting or printing, no subject being
>photographed and no photograph being created--there is just the seeing and
>the expressing, the emerging images--of life, beauty, art--call it what you
>will.
>
>I'll call it joy.
>
>Dan
>