Rainy Days

In college, I took a couple of photography classes, because I love art, but can’t seem to get drawings or paintings to come out on paper like they are in my head. Photography always seemed like something that I could manage—I could come up with a creative idea, capture it, and it would actually manifest like I saw in my head. Not that I’m that great at it—I still luck into shots with my fancy new camera, but I’m learning.

The best part about my photography class in college was the mediocre dark room we had to work with. The equipment was ancient and cumbersome—the enlargers frequently fell off their hinges and wouldn’t adjust right, the sink didn’t drain properly, and there was little to no ventilation for the harmful processing chemicals. I loved that room. It was in the basement of the admissions building, in a corner of the art room. Totally underground, so at least the quality of the darkness was superb, if nothing else worked well.

In class, we spent our time crafting shots and working with different types of film and learning about lighting and angles and concepts. That meant that after hours was the time we had to spend in the darkroom, because there was no time for that in class. We had passes for the building that would allow us to call the security officers at any hour and they would let us in to use the darkroom.

I took this class very seriously. I had nothing to do with my major, and I didn’t even think I’d end up as a professional photographer, but it was such a great release for my creative energy, and so fun, that I used it to get away from my other studies, and to decompress.

If you’ve never manually processed film, I probably won’t be able to explain it to you very well, but here is a typical evening in the darkroom:

First, you have to develop the film itself. This step has to be done in complete darkness, or you’ll overexpose the pictures you’ve already taken. You take your little canister of film into a separate part of the darkroom, where there is absolutely no light. You crack open the canister, because when your film rewinds it gets pulled completely back into the canister. Then you wind the film onto a little stainless reel that holds the film away from itself, so that the chemicals can get completely in between each frame. You drop the reel into a stainless steel cup with a lid (kind of like a martini shaker) filled with developing chemicals and shake gently to get the chemicals to develop the film (there is a time amount involved here…I can’t remember how long it takes). When you’re finished, you dump the chemicals out and rinse the film with water to stop the development process. Oh, and this entire step is done in COMPLETE DARKNESS, so you get to practice being a blind person AND handling dangerous chemicals at the same time!

Second, you select your pictures from the negatives. This step is done out in the light, usually on a light table with a magnifier in your eye so you can see the tiny negative images. We would cut our negatives into strips to fit them into a contact sheet and circle the ones we liked with a wax pencil. I love those pencils, where you peel off the layers one by one, and your writing looks like a child’s, with the fat wax tip smashing into the plastic of the contact sheet.

Third (and this is my favorite part), you process your negatives into photographs. Using an enlarger, you project light through your negative onto a piece of unexposed photo paper. An enlarger looks kind of like a giant, clunky microscope, with a light switch. The amount of time you send light through the negative onto the paper determines the exposure of the print, but when you turn the light off, the paper still looks white, so you can’t see what it looks like until you dunk it into the processor. Our processing table was a really crudely built table with high sides, and there were plastic trays for holding the chemicals, about the size of an 8 x 12 piece of photo paper. You slide the photo into the processor and swish it around with some tongs, and the picture appears before your eyes. When it looks like you want it to, you pull the paper out of that tray and slide it into another tray filled with a chemical that stops the processing. At the end of the processing table is a sink with a trickle of running water that swirls around and drains, so that there is always clean water to wash all the chemicals off the paper.

The darkroom is lit with red lights, as to avoid exposing your paper before you get the enlarger over it. The wash sink has a slow trickle of water to continually clean the processed paper. I was usually there alone, late at night. There was an old tape player in the darkroom, and being obsessed with music and mood as I am, I made myself a mix tape to listen to as I worked. All the songs were quiet and soulful, and I can't remember very many things more peaceful than working in that room. It made me feel creative and centered, and let me be quiet and focused. I can't remember all the songs on that tape, and I lost it, or left it in someone's car.

Today I am listening to my Songs for a Rainy Day playlist, which puts me in a similar mood (though sitting at my computer working doesn't give me quite the same feeling as the old darkroom). Here are the tracks, in case you're interested:

1. "Rain All Day," Fleming and John
2. "Can You Stand the Rain," Boys II Men
3. "Raining in Baltimore," Counting Crows
4. "On the Sea," Vertical Horizon
5. "Fire and Rain," James Taylor
6. "What Have They Done to the Rain," Marianne Faithful
7. "Only When the Rain Slips In," Scarlet Road
8. "Why Does it Always Rain on Me," Travis
9. "London Rain," Heather Nova
10. "It's Not Raining," Emily Richards
11. "Oblivion," Fiona Apple
12. "Raining on the Sky," Naked
13. "You Were Meant for Me," Jewel
14. "Raindrops + Sunshine," Smashing Pumpkins
15. "The Rain Song," Continental Drifters
16. "Crying in the Rain," A-Ha
17. "Summer Rain," Emotional