Keegan’s Darkroom Tips for Newbies (In No Particular Order)

  1. Be prepared to say goodbye to your social life (unless, of course, your friends are the subject of your photos). I spent five hours in the darkroom tonight. I usually try to go for two to three hours at a time. But between class, work, food, and homework, it sometimes feels like I don’t have a social life. I’ve had to turn down a few invites to do stuff because of reasons like, “Sorry, but I need darkroom time. My project is due soon.”
  2. Say goodbye to daylight (unless, of course, you’re taking photos in the daytime). This actually depends on the person. a lot of the times, I’ll go to the darkroom right before it starts getting dark and when I leave, oh hey! It’s nighttime. Of course, today, I was there from around 1:30 to 6:30, so that was a whole lot of daylight I missed. Basically, you will feel like you live in the dark and you will probably become a vampire. Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.
  3. Don’t go to the darkroom on an empty stomach. Maybe this is just me, but I hate being in the darkroom when I’m hungry. I’m pretty used to the chemical smell, but I just can’t deal with any of that shit when I need food.
  4. Good music is a must. This is more of a tip for when you’re in the darkroom alone. Being alone in the darkroom for hours on end can suck, especially if you get paranoid really easily. That’s why you put an iPod dock or a radio in the darkroom and blast fantastic music. I prefer music I can dance and sing along to. For instance, Girl Talk or my playlist titled “GOODMOOD.”
  5. Finish projects as early as possible. The darkroom tends to be packed the day before a project is due, so avoid it if you can. Give yourself enough time so you can putz around and get your photos how you want them. If everyone is rushing to get stuff done, that’s going to make you rush to get things done. (Also, this has to do with my own college’s darkroom, but there aren’t enough enlargers for the whole class, so waiting sucks. And when you’re finally in there and it’s packed, you tend to run into people when turning the corner. A lot.)
  6. Pay attention to time. This is mostly when it comes to developer. You don’t want to over-develop your photo and you don’t want to under-develop it. With stop and fixer, you just don’t want to go under. You can definitely under-stop and under-fix your photos, but it doesn’t really seem possible to over-stop or over-fix them. But you should still pay attention to time because you don’t want to leave your photos in the trays for a long time when other people are trying to print photos as well.
  7. Watch it with the phones. If you see someone has undeveloped photo paper, do not start flashing your phone around. Either check your phone outside of the darkroom or wait for them to put it away. Common sense, yo.
  8. It’s war and the enemy happens to be dust and water spots. Sometimes a little bit of dust adds to the effect of a photo. Other times, you will want to murder everything because a speck of dust will not go away.  Feel free to be OCD when it comes to cleaning your negatives because if you’re not, your prof will probably mention it to you later. And when you’re feeling particularly frustrated by a speck of dust, feel free to swear. I promise, it helps. If you’re angry enough, anyways.
  9. Be OCD about borders. You want nice, clean borders. None of those soft edges because unless it’s obvious that you wanted your borders to be soft, it will just look like a mistake you were too lazy to fix.
  10. Test strips are your best friend. Feel free to make a lot. Feel free to make a test strip that’s four inches wide. Feel free to make two test strips at once, but in different parts of the photo. Feel free to make test strips with 1 second intervals when you’re almost there, but not quite. When you want your blacks black and your whites white, sometimes you just need a lot of test strips before getting it right.
  11. When you have a good print, make a second copy. That way, you can either give it away or keep it in case you somehow ruin the first copy.

And that, my friends, are a few of my darkroom tips for newbies. Feel free to let me know if I’ve missed anything. Thoughts?