Digital BW, The Print

Wow! Those are some amazing stories, Rick...We should be grateful you  
are still with us. I am so thankful for not having anything like that  
really happen. My constant going up and down the stairs to wash  
prints, though, was difficult enough and I did fall down the stairs a  
few times, slipping from water on the steps.

If a software developer can come up with a program to emulate film  
grains (I think it's called Exposure), then maybe one day they can  
develop a program that allows us to see a transition from a white  
screen to an image to emulate a print developing in a tray :D

AnnMarie

AnnMarie Tornabene
www.annmarietornabene.net







On Dec 23, 2007, at 11:35 AM, Rick Colson wrote:

> In the "darkroom vs. digital" wars a couple of brief, interesting  
> stories:
>
> My father was a photographer in the 1920s. He woke up one day and he
> couldn't see. He was blind. This is not a good thing for a  
> photographer. He
> had absorbed a chemical in developer called "Metol" through his  
> skin which
> effected his optic nerve. (There is "metol" in developers today but  
> it's NOT
> the same chemical it was in the 1920s!!!) It turned out that this  
> chemical
> was a German product and just by happenstance he encountered a  
> German doctor
> in the hospital who was familiar with this type of rare chemical  
> interaction
> and knew the antidote! It was nicotine. So, on the advice of his  
> physician,
> my father started smoking. Within a day or two his vision was back to
> normal. Of course, he died many years later from a combination of  
> coronary
> artery disease, emphysema and bladder cancer, all of which are  
> known to be
> associated with smoking. Such is the irony of life.
>
> I spent far too much of my youth in darkrooms with my hands in all  
> kinds of
> developer/stop bath and fixer combinations, not to mention bleaches,
> enhancers and God knows what else. I once inhaled concentrated glacial
> acetic acid and it burned the inside of my nose and just about  
> knocked me
> unconscious. On another occasion, I was in the darkroom with my  
> father after
> shooting a banquet and we were rushing to bring proofs back to sell  
> at the
> banquet tables. It was completely dark and my father asked me to  
> turn on the
> safelight which hung on a cord from the ceiling. I didn't realize  
> that the
> floor was wet, this was before ground fault interrupters, and you can
> imagine what happened. This is in a big darkroom, probably 10x14,  
> one of
> several in his studio at 8:00 at night and no one else was around.  
> It was
> pitch black. He knew from the sound of my quivering voice that I  
> was being
> electrocuted and he also knew that if he grabbed me he would be  
> electrocuted
> as well and that no one would find us. He literally ran into me in  
> the dark,
> knocking me and him into a bookcase with chemicals on it which we  
> knocked
> over with chemicals spilling all over and broken glass bottles  
> everywhere. I
> won't waste your time with the rest of the story except to say that  
> we made
> several hundred dollars that night selling prints though several  
> people
> asked me why I had these spots bleached out of my pants and looked  
> like a
> polka-dotted clown!
>
> As for me, I hope never to go into a darkroom again. I continued to  
> spend
> too many hours in the dark through RIT and graduate school at  
> Harvard and
> MIT. I do have to confess, however, that like just about every other
> photographer I know, I long to share that mystical moment, when the  
> image
> first appears on a print in the darkroom, with my child (now 20).  
> The risks,
> however, have to be considered. I'll take inkjet with its costs and
> complications anytime.
>
> Rick Colson
>
> 








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