Re: [Leica] Musings on wet vs. digital darkrooms

["lea" <lea@whinydogpress.com>]

Yours are beautufully written observations...many of which I find to be true
as well.

I'm in the blessed position of having both a wonderfully spacious and
stocked wet darkroom and a beautifully equiped digital darkroom...both
appeal to my on-the-move temperment because any given day I may be more
inclined to use one over the other. Having both doesn't tie me down and
allows my learning to continue; often after I've tried something on the
computer I like to see if I can replicate it in the darkroom. A staunch
challenge usually!

Lea


- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Howard" <mvhoward@mac.com>
To: "Leica Users Group LUG" <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 6:36 PM
Subject: [Leica] Musings on wet vs. digital darkrooms


> When I was living in Columbus, OH, I had a wet darkroom built out of my
> bathroom.  I was fortunate enough to have a bathroom with no windows,
> good
> ventilation, and a little antechamber which could be sectioned off from
> the
> main hall with a dark cloth, where I could put my enlarger.  Now I find
> myself in Santa Cruz, in a wonderful location a mere 200m from the
> beach,
> but it turns out that when you build a house 200m from the beach, you
> put
> windows absolutely everywhere.  While my current bathroom is larger than
> some appartments I've stayed in, there are two problems: 1) It is
> difficult
> to get dark, without completely rebuilding it -- at least, not without
> doing the kinds of modifications that landlords usually frown upon and I
> find that landlords invent enough excuses to keep your security deposit
> as
> it is, without handing them additional ones.  2) The combination of
> temperature, humidity, and the lack of central heating means that my
> bathroom is rarely above 12 C.
>
> So, factoring all of these things together, plus the recent sale of an
> R2,
> a 25mm Skopar and some other assorted stuff, meant that I decided to go
> digital for now.  Ultimately, I'd much rather be a wizard in the wet
> darkroom than in a digital one... but I'd also much rather be able to
> produce prints of *some* kind than not at all.  So, a $299 film scanner
> (Minolta Dimage Dual Scan III) and a $249 printer (Canon i950) and four
> weeks later, I find myself thinking about the similarities and
> differences
> between wet darkrooms (henceforth just "darkroom") and digital darkrooms
> (henceforth just "computer").
>
> One of the greatest aspects of a darkroom is that feeling of magic.  If
> you've ever been in a darkroom, you know the feeling when you start
> seeing
> the print tones come up in the developer.  As if conjured up by some
> invisible genie and secret incantations, aided by metol, images appear
> as
> if my magic, from thin air (or rather, from thick solutions).  I know
> people who, fifty years after they first saw a print form in the
> developer, are as fascinated and as enthralled by this as the first
> time.
> And I'm pretty sure that, four decades from now, I will be the same.  No
> amount of experience with the phenomenon seems to detract from that
> sense
> of wonderment as a white paper suddenly darkens and shows a familiar
> face
> or an exotic location.
>
> The computer affords no such experience.  Which, to me, is the biggest
> difference between darkrooms and computers.  On the whole, working with
> photography on the computer is a more cerebral experience; working with
> photography in the darkroom is a more emotional (or visceral)
> experience.
> I've found myself thinking "yes, that looks about right" when working in
> Photoshop, while in the darkroom, I used to think "yeah, that feels
> about
> right".
>
> I think that this comes from the fundamentally different pace of working
> in the two media.  On the computer, you're leaping across a pond, from
> one stepping stone to another, always with the option of going back one
> stone should you take the wrong path.  As you jump, you rest on the new
> stone and view your surroundings.  Do they look right?  Are you going
> where you want to?  Did you get your feet wet yet?  Can you make that
> next
> leap over the intermediate stone, or should you take it stepwise more
> slowly?
>
> Working in the computer introduces natural pausing points.  I find
> myself
> doing one thing, stopping, and evaluating the outcome before going on.
> There are no time constraints.  It takes an almost fixed amount of time
> to
> do any one operation (they are for the most part instantaneous) after
> which you can then rest indefinately before moving on with the next
> step.
> Indeed, sometimes I save a snapshot of the whole process, just by saving
> the file, and then pick up the following day where I left off.
>
> It's a staccato dance towards the envisioned result.  One step, pause,
> two
> step, pause, etc., a tango with the left hand side of the brain leading
> a
> few steps, then stopping, twisting around and looking back, then
> forward,
> then another few swirling steps.  A stepwise walkabout across an
> unfamiliar landscape, but always one step at the time, and always with
> the
> opportunity to stop, and survey the route you took to get here.
>
> The end result is interesting.  Not only do you have the result in the
> form of the photograph itself, which, as always, depending upon your
> skill
> and willingness to experiment, may or may not look like the envisioned
> product, but the process is self-documenting.  With the modern tools
> available, each step can be saved separate from the previous and
> subsequent ones.  You can go back to the original image, by playing the
> sequence in reverse, then forward, and (again) observing how the changes
> take place before your eyes.  Or break the sequence and play it out of
> order.
>
> Looking back, I realize that I never did this staccato dance in the
> darkroom.  The necessity to traverse the (perhaps) unfamiliar landscape
> towards the end result still remains, but with each new print, you'd
> start
> from the same starting point.  Then, with a plan in mind, in one
> continuous
> flow, you'd set off, skipping, running, scrambling across the landscape
> until you come to a stop -- a print.  There was no pausing along the
> way,
> no stopping and looking back.  Instead of the stepwise hopping, darkroom
> work seems to be characterized by a flow of activity that, once
> initiated,
> has to pour out in one continuous stream, or you'll never get across the
> terrain at all.
>
> I've always felt a parallel (rightly or wrongly) between photography and
> music.  When I see a very good photograph, as a print or on the screen,
> I
> "hear" music.  Photography to me is all about capturing moods,
> emotions, a
> sense of place, the essence of someone's personality, and music has
> often
> been used to do the same.  So, for me, it is only natural that the two
> complement each other.  Interestingly enough, while on occasion I see
> (fuzzy, fleeting, mental) images when listening to music, it's much more
> rare.
>
> Stetching the simile to absurdity, I feel that computer-based
> photography
> is about timbre, pitch, and harmony.  Darkroom work is about rhythm and
> pacing.  Timing is all but unimportant in the computer, but is central
> to
> darkroom work.  I cannot imaging how you'd produce prints in a darkroom
> without rhythm, timing, and sequence, while in the computer, I find
> myself
> inventing strategies that allow to me accomplish (much) the same thing
> by
> specifically avoiding them.
>
> So, my conclusions?  I think the main insight is that there is no such
> thing as a "digital darkroom".  While you can produce and manipulate
> photographic images in both darkrooms and in (on?) computers, and while
> you can arrive at more or less the same result, the two experiences are
> fundamentally different.
>
> I'm very happy that I have a computer, a film scanner, and an inkjet
> printer, because it allows me to close the photographic loop that has
> been
> open for too long.  As such, I find myself embarking on photography with
> renewed enthusiasm, and a desire to learn more about how I see the world
> and the kinds of photographs which I take.  I delight in the ability to
> produce prints and give to friends and family, and the simple
> conversation
> pieces that a photograph, or a collection of photographs, can be.
>
> But I yearn for the day when I can have a permanent darkroom in a home
> of
> my own and can experience that magic taking place in the trays.
>
> M.
>
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>

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