Photography Class

Sophomore year of college I took a photography course using an old SLR. The class was difficult for me for three reasons. One, I had very little experience with taking photos before the class, two I procrastinated entirely too much on projects, and three the light meter in the camera I was using was broken. In order to overcome the third problem, I had to take each picture at about 6 different settings and hope that one of them worked. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t.

I’d like to say I learned a lot from that class and afterwards I was able to take much better photos, but the truth of the matter is I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

One part of the class that I did manage to learn was how to develop film. To me that was the fun part. I don’t know why enjoyed it, but what I liked best about the development process was taking the film out of the canister and preparing it for the chemical process which set the film.

A lot of times on tv shows and movies and the such one sees darkrooms where the lights are dim, but one can still see. This was true for part of the development process, but when we removed the film from the canister, we were working in a room so dark you couldn’t see your hand an inch away from your face.

As a result, many of the students seemed to struggle to figure out what they were doing merely by feel and memory. The dark never bothered me. I would lay everything out in the exact order I wanted it, flick the light off and go to work. That part of the process would only take me a minute or so but I enjoyed it. It was like going into a test knowing that I knew all the answers before I even picked it up.

Now if only I could learn to consistently take photos worth developing ...