High school darkroom

There were no girls at my grammar school, so what is a boy to do but play football and learn to process photographs? There is a scene in the Bill Forsyth film, Gregory's Girl , where the geeky boy is printing and selling prints of the new female football star to the lads, in his school. Mine was not such an entrepreneurial teenagehood, but I learned a lot, even on my own. There were no teachers who seemed to know anything about processing, so I had to read and experiment.


When I got to college, I shot more photographs and processed less. My first SLR was a Praktica, a heavy East-German model, that was incredibly good value for money. I used this for years and eventually replaced it with an Olympus OM2, as used by Chris Bonnington on Everest. My first was stolen in Hartford, CT. I still have the second one. As labs got cheaper and cheaper, I did less and less processing. Yes, seeing the image appear, on a print, is a magical moment. I saw little point in breathing in the obnoxious smell of darkroom chemicals.

I used Canon film cameras since about 10 years ago and Canon digital cameras for the past 4 years. I no longer shoot film. When I shoot dance in a dark theater or a wedding in a dark hotel, changing speed is such a great feature! With the Canon 1D, you can shoot at ISO 3200 and see virtually no noise.

I show people prints from a dance event where the background is a perfect black. See how much noise you get from digital?