Here's a picture I took with film and developed in a darkroom.

3 years ago by nickajeglin to c/creative

I took this at the zoo. The sea lion was playing with the kids and they were reaching and jumping begging it for attention. Just after I took this picture, the sea lion playfully snapped at the kids through the plexiglass, and they all happily screamed. I hope the picture makes you smile.

My grandpa gave me an olympus om-2n, and a family friend was offloading his entire darkroom, so I ended up with all the stuff for free. Since then I've been blundering my way along, and after a year or so I feel like I'm starting to get some control. I'm not normally an artistic person, but I really enjoy how methodical you need to be with the analog process. If you enjoy this, I will post a few more. I had a manic episode a couple months ago, and produced some pictures that I think are ok.

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ShakshukaBlyat23 2 points 3 years ago

Damn, that's a very unique composition, the spiral leads my eyes in and they're locked on to the hands. Pretty cool stuff.

Have you experimented with dodging and burning yet? Printing the images and experimenting with exposure was absolutely my favorite part of working in a darkroom.

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nickajeglin 2 points 3 years ago

Thanks very much :) I was so excited when I saw the negative with the spiral come out of the fixer. Most of my rolls are "eh", but sometimes a frame will scream "print me now!".

I have done a little dodging and burning, but so far only in the service of "correcting" things. This negative was really challenging to print. I had to burn in the background and dodge the sea lion pretty hard to be able to get detail in both. I will probably revisit it down the road as there is a lot more detail in the sea lion than you can see here. Ultimately, I decided that the strength of the spiral was more important to me than getting full detail in the sea lion, but that decision was motivated by my skill deficit ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

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