[Leica] The Joy of Darkroom

[Guy Bennett <gbennett@lainet.com>]

For me, a great part of the charm of the wet darkroom is like that of using
the M: it's a way to learn (and hopefully master one day) the craft of
traditional photography.

I'm not against using a computer to enhance/reproduce photographic images,
I've been doing so for years (though the pix in question have generally
appeared in books and magazines as opposed to being "stand alone" prints).
I simply want to know how printmaking is done traditionally for my own
knowledge and pleasure.

You can draw, paint, compose/perform music with a computer, and in many
cases (especially, but not exclusively, if the finished work is going end
up on a CD ROM or on the web) that will be the most efficient way to go
about it. But sketching with a pencil or a set of water colors, or actually
picking up a musical instrument and playing it are very pleasurable
activities in and of themselves, and no other type machine can duplicate
those experiences.

Perhaps a computer generated pencil stetch can be indistinguishable from a
pencil generated sketch. That's wonderful. But picking up a pencil, the
weight and feel of it, the slight "scratch" as it skims the surface of the
paper, the experience of doing that - how fine it is.

Before I am accused of being an anachronism I repeat that I'm not against
computer generated anything; I make a living in part with a computer. I
just enjoy those other, non-computer related activities too much to give
them up.

I don't want to lose one technology for another.

Guy