A Film Developing Workshop
April 12th, 2016
I want to write about this day and post photos from it so I don't forget. Already too much time has passed since then.
I've always had a little bit of curiosity when it comes to photography, but because of so many people around me that seem to be professional photographers, I never indulged in it to much. So it has taken me many years to realize that more of my curiosity has to do with the mechanics of photography, how it works, rather than the art of photo-taking, for instance. I have an old SLR film camera that I use every once in a while, and it's fascinating to me how it runs purely on mechanics...all gears and springs and levers, no batteries. (Well, except for a tiny one that runs the light meter, but that isn't necessary to take a photo.) I love learning about how light enters it and the mirrors inside push the image onto your eye, and then also onto film. I'm sure digital cameras are actually more complicated than film, but maybe they are so beyond me that they don't interest me. I like keeping it simple.
So when Dorothy told me about her friend Meghan's film workshop that she signed us up for, I was thrilled. Film development was a part of the whole process that I actually had no idea how it worked. I always brought my film to a lab and had them develop it for me, and always wondered what had to happen in the back room before I received my photos on a disc. I would get to do this myself? Rad.
We went to Meghan's studio and we (and the other peeps who signed up for her workshop) each had our roll of film that we had respectively shot in the weeks prior. These personal rolls of film would be our guinea pigs, our own entry gate into the world of darkrooms and chemicals, and making memories come alive again. I was excited and asked a lot of questions. Meghan was great, by the way. She knows her stuff, and was patient and even a bit happy that I was asking so many questions.
I'll try to keep this long story short. We were all in the last stage of developing and Meghan told us we could take a little peek at our photos if we wanted. I didn't. I was pretty smug, and wanted to be surprised and amazed at the final product of my roll. I remembered different moments that I had captured, and was really looking forward to see how so many of these shots turned out. I unrolled my roll of film......and it was completely blank. Not full of black frames, or white frames, or any kind of frame. It was just a black. strip. of. nothing.
I wanted to cry. I was mostly so sad about the things I thought I had captured being lost, and also a little embarrassed. I didn't know what to do or say for a moment. I opened up my camera and released the shutter with the back open to see if there was a mechanical failure. There wasn't. I just don't think I loaded the film completely right and it slipped out and nothing ever made it on. I felt like such a n00b.
Meghan saw so quickly and clearly how disappointed I was, and jumped in right away to do mend the situation. She told me to load the roll of film that was given to me at the beginning of the workshop, and she said I could shoot around her studio, and when I finished the roll, she would stay with us and go through the whole developing process again, just so I could walk away with some photos. It was such a sweet and selfless thing for her to do, and what was even sweeter was how she ended up taking some portraits of Dorothy and I on the fire escape outside her studio. And I do have to say....they are some pretty great photos. Meghan, THANK YOU. I won't forget this day, and I promise we will come back once wedding planning craziness gets done!
Here are some of my favorite shots. (And a couple from Dorothy's roll.)
-A
See Meghan's work here. You can sign up for her Intro to Shooting Film class here or her Intro to Developing Film here.