Life in Black and White

I started to shoot photography in High School. I was dating a gal who loved it and was pretty good at classic black and white photography. I was working in an advanced ceramics class. She wanted to learn how to throw a pot on the wheel and I wanted to learn how to take pictures. It worked out so well that the next quarter of school we each took the corresponding classes.

As it turned out my father had a nice camera, which worked out perfect for the class. The camera was an old Olympus OM1. 

The thing was beautiful, and even today strikes me as what a camera should look like. My pops wanted to capture Alaska at its finest and did manage to get some good shots with it, but never got into the entire process. He always bought his own film and had his pictures processed at a store. I liked the complexity.

Knowing next to nothing about photography, I was amazed by the entire process. My Instructor Mr. Schnider built a great course. We started by learning the basics of optics – how an image is transferred, what things react to provide an image ect… The first pictures we shot were through a simple pin-hole camera that we built!!!

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/education/lessonPlans/pinholeCamera/pinholeCanBox.shtml

We spent a week working with those and getting use to developing the exposed photo paper.  We then learned how to process film – loading it, and unloading in complete darkness and what chemicals and concentrations to use to process film. –this while exploring how to shoot. We were given assignment each week of pictures to build or methods to process and took refresher quizzes over the parts and functions of the cameras. The second semester dealt with processing the film to the actual photo- using different enlargers, a variety of light filters and varied exposure time.  Science and art.  All in the attempt of creating that perfect shot.

I loved learning those basics- I really makes me appreciate the technology behind these new DSLR cameras.  It’s amazing and difficult to classically produce quality images, even in black and white! I was allowed to try the color darkroom a time or two and that was even more challenging.

While it is convenient, faster, and probably much more ecologically friendly with this Digital material I do miss classic developing-the process, the attention to detail, the time taken for each step. Maybe I’m just nostalgic. Still I feel i'm a bit partial to a quality hand processed B+W print.