jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
I dismantled my darkroom today.
I was in the middle of one of my periodic "gotta clean up the apartment" bursts of activity, and somehow that morphed into admitting to myself that I haven't made any prints in months, have no plans for making more in the foreseeable future, and that there were probably more productive uses for that few square feet of precious counter space.
So I drained the water out of the tempering jackets on the Nova processor, took the Omega's column off the baseboard, cleared off the countertop of all the miscellaneous bits we all accumulate to personalize our printing setups, bagged everything up in plastic, and packed it all away.
Oh, it didn't go far -- just onto the shelves below the countertop. Even as I was doing it, I kept telling myself: "It's okay. I can have everything set up again in 30 minutes, any time I want."
But in the back of my mind, I know that 30 minutes is a big enough psychological barrier that it makes it even less likely that I'll do any printing again soon.
It's strange how something that was such a big part of my life for so long can just wither away like that. I used to think that the ability to do their own darkroom work (or at least to know how to do it) was what separated the serious photographers from the poseurs. I never worried when the electricity went off, because I was so accustomed to maneuvering around in total darkness. I was proud of the fact that my basement smelled like stop bath. I liked being an enlarger-and-safelight guy.
Now I'm a digital-camera-and-scanner-and Epson guy. Feh.
Even now, I keep reassuring myself that I can go back. That I'm just putting the Omega and all the little EL-Nikkors into suspended animation, ready sometime in the future to wake up and do my bidding... maybe when I retire and have lots of spare time to indulge myself. (I try not to think about whether anybody will still be making b&w paper and chemistry by then.)
But right at the moment I feel really crummy. Sorry -- as I said in the title, I just need to vent!
I was in the middle of one of my periodic "gotta clean up the apartment" bursts of activity, and somehow that morphed into admitting to myself that I haven't made any prints in months, have no plans for making more in the foreseeable future, and that there were probably more productive uses for that few square feet of precious counter space.
So I drained the water out of the tempering jackets on the Nova processor, took the Omega's column off the baseboard, cleared off the countertop of all the miscellaneous bits we all accumulate to personalize our printing setups, bagged everything up in plastic, and packed it all away.
Oh, it didn't go far -- just onto the shelves below the countertop. Even as I was doing it, I kept telling myself: "It's okay. I can have everything set up again in 30 minutes, any time I want."
But in the back of my mind, I know that 30 minutes is a big enough psychological barrier that it makes it even less likely that I'll do any printing again soon.
It's strange how something that was such a big part of my life for so long can just wither away like that. I used to think that the ability to do their own darkroom work (or at least to know how to do it) was what separated the serious photographers from the poseurs. I never worried when the electricity went off, because I was so accustomed to maneuvering around in total darkness. I was proud of the fact that my basement smelled like stop bath. I liked being an enlarger-and-safelight guy.
Now I'm a digital-camera-and-scanner-and Epson guy. Feh.
Even now, I keep reassuring myself that I can go back. That I'm just putting the Omega and all the little EL-Nikkors into suspended animation, ready sometime in the future to wake up and do my bidding... maybe when I retire and have lots of spare time to indulge myself. (I try not to think about whether anybody will still be making b&w paper and chemistry by then.)
But right at the moment I feel really crummy. Sorry -- as I said in the title, I just need to vent!
