30 November 2010

Olden Time


This is another picture from my line assignment. Don't worry, it wont be line forever.
You may be annoyed by the 'noise' on the photo. 'There's lint on it!' you declare. Allow me to explain myself.
In photography class, we develop our negatives in the classroom and make our prints in the darkroom. The darkroom has orange lights, the kind that won't fog photosensitive paper. (I, of course, would be the one to say, 'wait, something's wrong' and turn on the white lights, exposing all the paper for future classes and ruining everything.) It is actually very dark in the darkroom and the negatives are grey! I set my negatives down and couldn't find them again. I raged, went back to the classroom, and did my math homework for lack of anything else to do.
The weekend passes and on monday, I have photography class again. Despairingly I ransacked the darkroom again in an attempt to find my long lost negatives. of course, one of my classmates immediately holds them up and says, 'Hey, Madi, aren't these yours?' Delightedly, I seized them. I figured that they were probably stained from fingers and dusty from their week long time in negative prison. So I promptly ran them through the sink and wiped them through my fingers.
Of course, you're never ever ever supposed to get negatives wet. It swells the emulsion on the back of the film and kills your photo quality.
I made my prints anyway.

3 comments:

  1. I love it. It carries so much character and imparts history to your image. This looks like a relic photograph from the 1920's. I love the shallow DOF, the image plane and the contrast here. In 1986, Mr. Baldwin, first used the term which I have embraced for 2 decades now. "Happy Accident." Sometimes things that happen not directly on purpose present favorable results just the same.

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  2. Yes! Happy accident!
    I really like the vintage feel and "lint".

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  3. btw: you chose the ideal focal point for all the right reasons.

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