In the epistle "Re: Karen's Darkroom?" scribed 03-16-98 20:46,
Karen Wattie did thus proclaim to Bob Dial:
Karen 
KW>  BD> Whenever the work required dwarfs the pleasure obtained, a
KW>  BD> hobby of any sort is destined to be short lived.  To set up
KW>  BD> and develop film is one thing.  Making large or numerous
KW>  BD> prints is another.  Many don't mind setups for developing,
KW>  BD> as there isn't physically much involved to do it.  Start
KW>  BD> there, and see if it perks interest in doing more.
KW> 
KW>  I'm not sure I understand.  Are you saying that if I developed
KW>  the film, I would print only a contact sheet, and maybe just
KW>  a couple of prints from each film?
Knowing that I would not be paying for prints that I would not
make, I would generally shoot a lot more views of the subject,
film being fairly cheap. Then at leisure, I could contemplate
the shot(s) that best fit my memories and feelings of the shoot,
and those would be the ones printed. 
Often when shooting I would compose with the darkroom in mind -
planning to dramatically crop top and bottom to make a print with
a panoramic format. On other shoots that did not warrant renting
a view camera, I would shoot a building with a super-wide lens -
vertical - on a medium format keeping the film parallel to the
building. The negative then has the building on the top half
of the negative with no foreshortening, but with the foreground
full of trash. Crop everything to the base of the building, and
you have in effect created a rising front camera! It is then
totally your judgement on where to crop - no negotiating with
lab techs. Make a print - contemplate it - recompose as you
see a need.
If the perfect light and angle on the subject force you to
include overhead wires at the top of the frame, no worry -
shoot and crop them out in the printing. The world was not
designed with the 35mm frame in mind!
If you are shooting under street lights or some industrial
lighting, you may get severely green or yellow prints back
from the photofinisher. In your own darkroom, you may be
able to actually accomplish a nice neutral colour balance!
It is astounding how far you can go in balancing light after
the fact.
Since one has complete control through the whole process, the
way you shoot will be altered. Being able to crop and/or colour
balance after the fact can mean the difference between a great
shot and one you might not even shoot.
If you wish to move beyond the simple objective image, there is
a graphic world available in the darkroom. Use a texture screen
with tri-colour printing to simulate the effect of the late
19th century pointillist painting. Use litho contact negs to
do posterizations and density slicing and producing positive
separations for photo-silkscreens. One can do spectacular
graphic derivatives of photos. One can also experiment with
processing slide film as a negative for some quite bizarre
effects - a lot of stuff just not possible through most labs,
and certainly not affordable if it was.
larry!
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