Plunging into the Darkroom
This semester was full of a ton of new things for me. I got to work with plaster as a sculptural media for the first time, faced sculptural challenges like what can I use to sculpt the human form in a small apartment, began to learn to wheel throw, and also got to try shooting with film for the first time.
Film Photography, is something I have always wanted to try. So I was super excited and grateful for the short time I did get to spend out taking pictures and in the darkroom.
Unfortanelty due to COVID, I don’t have access to my contact sheets or many of the photos I developed. So if you are reading this post and notice a lack of images, just know they will eventually be added once I have access to the studios and can reclaim my things. For now, though I can share my first piece from the class, as well as the experiences I made.
The first thing we worked on during the class, was simply to get to know our camera. We were to take around 20 photos, some underexposed, some overexposed, and some correctly exposed. Then choose our best one to develop and present to the class.
Unfortunately, the light meter in my camera was very finicky, that combined with my inexperience led to my film being overexposed. The good news was this was a fairly easy fix in the darkroom. If my film was overexposed while shot, then I just had to expose my photo paper for a shorter amount of seconds.
To find the perfect amount of time to expose the photo paper too you use something called a test strip. This is where you take a strip of photo paper and divide it into sections, and then slowly expose each section to a different amount of seconds. Then when you develop the test strip, you are able to see the perfect amount of seconds needs for your photo.
Out of the 20 photos I took, I ended up choosing a portrait I took of myself in the mirror. I decided to use this one over the other photos I took because it was the first project of the class. I felt that as the project was all about getting to know your camera and the art form of film, it was a good way to start to introduce myself as an artist in this new media.
Though my time with Film was short, I had a lot of fun learning what I did and I’m grateful for the time I did get to spend working with the art form. It would be very cool to get to explore the media further in the future.