Two Summers Too Late

Alas, finally, after saying I would for the past year, I'm blogging about my photography class from last summer (2007). It was a really fun experience and probably the only time I felt like I moderately understood the MBTA system, traveling in (and out) with two friends was a lot of fun. Anyways, so on with the photography: my class was color photography, which was a first for me (I took black and white at the high school). This time, we couldn't develop our film ourselves, it had to be sent out and done by other people (the chemicals used for color are different and too dangerous to meddle with, so it wasn't allowed, with black and white I was able to develop the film...it smells nasty in case you were wondering). So rather than explaining the process through words, I figured I would explaing the color photography [printing] process through pictures AND words! And so it begins...

1.

(please forgive the flipped picture... sorry!) once the film is back from being developed, you make a test strip to find the [ideally] perfect exposure for your picture. we do this by placing the negative in the enlarger, setting the lens up, and then putting the photo paper at the bottom of the enlarger. basically, you set the enlarger to expose the paper for certain short time intervals, on this picture, I think I did 2 seconds. You only allow a small strip of the paper to be shown each time you expose. after each interval, you add on another "strip" to be exposed. the side with the darker strips on this picture is the side that the first exposure was made. you do this until you get to the end of the paper.

2. (no picture for this part)
Then, you have to place the paper in a special light proof box and transport it from the dark room where you did all of that to a different dark room that has a big 'ol machine that processes the print (at least that's how they did it at AIB). When you get the print back, you look at the print and decide where the perfect exposure is. On this picture, it was somewhere around the middle (the strip to the right of the strip with the middle handlebar in it, so I think that's 16 seconds, I think...)

3. Then, you do the real picture. On this picture, I set the enlarger to expose for 16 seconds all at once, and then, hopefully it's done. you have to transport it to the big 'ol developing machine again, but that's pretty much it, assuming that it's a perfectly balanced picture...

but when it isn't:
-you can color correct a photo, which is generally necessary. in the enlarger, you can change the colors that expose the photo (please don't ask for an explaination, you wouldn't get a very thorough answer anywho). so you would just do different prints, adjusting the color meter on the elarger until you got a picture you were happy with.
-you can do all kinds of things to the print while you're in the darkroom too, it's lots of fun!

end product [drumroll please....]

here are some other ones too...

these balloons were from a water balloon fight we did. we put them in one of those weeding buckets. so it actually looks really gross and dirty, i'm not sure how i feel about that.



on this picture, I burned the edges. basically, after your picture has been exposed you can put your hand over the lens and control where the light goes. so, I put it on the corners to make them look worn out/burned.

So, tada!! This was my summer of 2007, every Tuesday and Thursday of July! It was an awesome experience, and I had so much fun. I had so so many awesome experiences and was able to meet/befriend people who I would have never met before. I loved it!!