Darkrooms are not as dark as the name implies — you can actually walk around quite easily in the dim glow of the safelight, save for the occasion pole, which is oddly painted black against a black wall, and also knocking against classmates and “real” full-time art students as you squeeze by the printing machine, which we use instead of the old tray format, and that’s convenient though it seems to take away from the romance of watching the white pieces of paper come to life. We’re in the sixth week of class I think, though due to class cancellations we’ve only had three actual classes, of which I have only been to two. But they’ve been the important two, make no mistake — processing and printing — so I have enough knowledge to print anything I want, at a cost, on average, far greater than going to the print show, but I suppose more satisfying as well.

I’ve done darkroom photography twice in my life, first in Grade 7 and then three years later in Grade 10.

In Grade 10, there was some sort of media arts class where we learned how to use all sorts of communications and information technology — darkroom photography, video, drafting and, on very primitive machines that would be laughable today but seemed mystical in 1996, digital photography. I took a picture on the digital camera of the trail left behind by someone rolling a snowball, with the camera right down against the grass looking into what looked like a giant cavern — all of 10 centimetres high, if that — as it stretched all the way to school, and the teacher was quite impressed with the use of lines and unusual perspective. In the darkroom, I made similar unsuccessful attempts to be arty, but had a blast breathing in the fumes from the carcinogenic chemicals. But the digital camera, a sign of things to come, with it’s large floppy disk, limited storage space and low resolution, was the clear favourite and must have cost thousands of dollars. And while the fate of film wasn’t sealed quite yet, we should have all been able to predict that soon they’d be able to put a camera in almost everything.

Four years earlier, in Grade 7 Industrial Arts class, after we made C02 racing cars and before Matt nearly sawed through his finger in the band saw, we made pinhole cameras. I made mine out of a Yahtzee box, and I was amazed that this $5 piece of cardboard, metal and masking tape, with a piece of black and white photographic paper taped inside, was able to produce an actual picture. Well, more than a decade later, I’ve made another pinhole camera, again out of a Yahtzee box, and while I’ve yet to perfect the exposure times, hopefully I’ll have something good soon.

Until then, here’s a picture from a camera with a lens much larger than a pinhole.