they're beautiful, no doubt, they're just almost flawless to the point where it doesn't look natural. And one of the nicest things about film is that you can allow for a little bit of graininess and a little bit of maybe, depending on if you wanted a certain blur, it actually looks intentional. And I'm not sure that I see too many edited photos oh look like that. They can't be successful. But there is something there that I think you you can try pretty close to replicate it. But I don't know.
The Kodak moments of days past have transformed into a limitless number of selfies and status updates. So in the age of Instagram, is there room left for dark room photography. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. The analog process of shooting film and developing that film is still something that is taught and learned. But why still do it? To talk about the benefit? Let's go to our expert.
I'm Bernadette cash. And I have been asked to teach darkroom photography for beginners here at Heartland.
What kind of background do you have with photography?
Well, it all started actually, in high school, I would take my dad's old Minolta camera and I learned darkroom photography there on a very basic level. But I think I've always had a fascination I think I've gone through a series of film cameras from childhood on up and from the Kodak Instamatic, which is like a Polaroid to the little small, skinny 110 cameras. And I do remember going on my bike, dropping it off at the drugstore, waiting for a week to come back and pick them up and see what they were like. But yeah, I think it's always started with that. But honestly, a lot of my photography experience has been developed here at Heartland.
Tell me about that. Did you take classes here? did you how did Heartland have a role in your photography, interest and skills? Sure,
I saw one of those booklets out there were in the mail. And it was for continuing education. For I believe it was Introduction to Digital Photography. That year. That was when the Nikon D 7000 came out. And I got my hands on one. But I realized, wow, I don't really want to have this nice expensive camera, just to put it on automatic. So I figured I could read a lot of things on the internet. But I thought it'd be helpful to take a class and do this hands on. And I started with one class. And I think quickly afterwards, they offered an intermediate. And then I thought, Well, this was all they had at that continuing ed but I realized that I looked at Heartland class scheduled and they offered a digital photography as a semester long class. So I started taking digital one, then digital two. I think I did photography one, which is the introduction, Introduction to film photography. I did that actually for two semesters, I liked it that much. And photography, too. And then I liked it so much. I wanted to be back in the darkroom. I did independent study for a few semesters after that.
So really, you started out, taking that next step with digital and then went back to working in the darkroom,
right. It's kind of funny, you think. But even though digital was sort of nice, and it was instantaneous, and I actually think when I sort of, I don't know, regressed or backtrack to film photography, something I had once learned so many years ago, it forced me to be very more aware of technique, what I needed to do, you only had 36 shots allotted, and you didn't want to waste any. Whereas I think I got pretty lazy with digital, you know, you could turn it on where it takes several frames at once. So hopefully out of those dozens, something nice turned out and this one really forced me to get it pretty right within, you know, two or three shots.
So now you're teaching darkroom photography, with your students coming in? Well, first of all, when you think about how efficient it is, in professional settings to use digital photography now, how much is dark room photography currently being employed?
Honestly, I don't think it's much at all. When people have asked me that they saw that I was teaching a film photography class, I've actually been approached and said, I didn't know those cameras still existed anymore. I didn't know that was still a thing. And I said it is very hard to find. I think Heartland has a great setup of like a dozen enlargers that I think is probably the nicest that I've heard about in the central Illinois area. It is a lot easier and immediate to do digital. But I think film photography will really help to help people just kind of slow down think about the process. and true, this is not going to be something where. And that's probably one of the drawbacks. When you take black and white photographs that you develop in the darkroom yourself. These aren't the instant, shareable things that you can apply a filter on and share via social media. But I tell you there is something that's very nice and very gratifying to see something tangibly, I think we all do. I think, when it comes to looking at images, we can look at stuff on our phone, but I know that people still go to museums, or they actually look at old photo albums to actually kind of see it close touch them. Well, I want to
talk a little bit about the benefits of that process and what is gained or lost with doing, I guess you call it analog photography, it is. Many people might not understand what all is involved, period. So could you walk us briefly through the entire process, from shooting on film to developing the film and what you have to do to get your finished product,
right? When you have a 35 millimeter SLR film camera, you know, first of all, you take your film, and when you are able to load your camera just so you might have an option of 24 to 36 shots depending on if you maybe if you roll your own film that could be a lot smaller or a lot larger. Then when the end of the roll is finished, we take it into the film processing area of the Darkroom. And involves chemicals you take out in the dark, complete dark, you remove the film from the canister in the dark. And you kind of have to learn this where you sort of just by feel only insert the film onto a reel and to sort of take it up on the spool. And you place it in a light proof tank that has a hole in it just for pouring in liquids. And this is actually the fun part for me, but you agitate him, which is basically you just kind of swish it around a number of times for anywhere from six, seven minutes, a process where you stop and start. And then when you're able to get that out and rinse it and dry it, then you can look on the light table and see which images you'd like to print. And for the printing is, is another process where you take the negatives onto an enlarger. And you can see the image. And I think that's the the best part actually is when you get that photo and you expose the photos to what you think it would need and just watching it go through the different trays as it comes along.
When you have people that have a little bit of familiarity, and they're very comfortable taking digital pictures come into this class, what is the most difficult thing for them to adjust to and learn
slow down? Probably just to slow down. And honestly I did. I took digital photography for a few semesters and through continuing ed. And I was really quite surprised that when I sort of regressed, I don't know, for lack of a better word and took film photography that, Oh, I thought I really understood aperture. I thought I really understood how things the health settings worked. But it was really obvious. For me anyway, that it was all on me and not something that if I didn't get it right in camera that I could adjust and tweak later in Photoshop, I really had to learn how to sort of get it right, if I wanted to not have to retake more photos.
Well, going back to the beginning of that process, it's really interesting to think now you have somebody that has a digital camera, and depending on the size of their SD card, they're taking hundreds Oh, yeah, a pictures. That gives you a lot of options. But it also, I would imagine makes you extremely less selective in what you're capturing in the shot in your lens at any particular time. 32 shots is what you said that 36? Yeah. So you're not just going to go through rolls of film in 10 seconds, like you would if you would have that option to do so with a digital camera. So talk about what that kind of forces photographers to do if they're shooting on film,
right. And honestly, as a beginner, I think I did go through a lot of shots thinking, you know, if you have a certain setting where you adjust the aperture, the shutter speed, how much time and how much light hits, the light is able to strike an image on that light sensitive part of the film. You know, you can actually go and try to make certain adjustments but yeah, you are sort of in a position where you want to get it just right and I it really is trial and error, but I think it's not gonna be one of those things where you take a shot and Oh, I hope this turns out. I think it'll come with time in practice, but it made me consider what I wanted. I really was just taking just dozens and dozens of shots of things I really didn't. Again, just kind of I hope and pray that it will look good. Versus I'm pretty sure I got that right lighting, right, the lighting is just right. And I know I need to do have my camera at a certain type of settings,
that process is so much more slow, is that a frustration for students that at first, they kind of can't wrap their head around that this entire process is going to take so much longer than it would if you were just doing it all digitally.
You're totally right on about that. And I think it may be, I may speak for just certain generations of people, but I can see it in the way that just ah, you know, they, from everything from the processing, like they want to see it. And even when starting to make images and print them. You also when you are agitating your photos inside each of the individual trays for each process. You don't want to rush things too much like a flash fry in the pan, you do want to ease into it. And I know I think that's that'd be really hard. But I think delayed gratification is probably not a bad thing for people to learn and that good things pun intended, develop and take a little bit of time and not just there you are.
Yeah, there's an advantage to slowing things down. They say it's very hard to teach people patients I've met but that almost forces you to be patient and to think about what you're doing.
Absolutely. I think that's what I found probably more so even than taking the photos on film. Probably my my most enjoyable aspect of it is why enjoy developing the film. But the prints watching that. It's like Christmas, honestly just watching that come through. And realizing when you look at it and take it out into the light, you know, I can actually make this better. And that, again, is not like something where you can throw a filter on it make it look cool, which is very interesting, because I think there's like a lot of interest in the appeal of getting a digital image that we take on our phone and throwing something out to make it look like a Film A film photo back in the day. So I don't know. Well, that
raises an interesting point. Modern photographers use Photoshop a lot to get certain effects with the shots that they've taken. And a lot of those tools in Photoshop are actually trying to imitate tools that can be physically created with darkroom photography. And some of them are more successful in doing that or not. Sometimes maybe you're trying to apply a tool onto an image that it's not really the way that would work. If you were doing it in the darkroom. Can you talk a little bit about some of the techniques in dark room photography that people try to recreate in Photoshop?
You know, it's interesting, a little bit of bias will come out in this remark, but I think a lot of edited photos, heavily edited photos can. They're beautiful, no doubt, they're just almost flawless to the point where it doesn't look natural. And I think one of the nicest things about film is that you can allow for a little bit of graininess and a little bit of maybe, depending on if you wanted a certain blur, it actually looks intentional. And I'm not sure that I see too many edited photos on one look like that. I think I do you see it in tents, like whether a bluish tint, or the reddish tint of certain color film back in, I don't know the 80s or 70s. But they can be successful. But I think again, I'm referring to black and white, there is something there that I think you you can try pretty close to replicate it. But I don't know maybe it's my untrained eye perhaps other people can say, Oh, they can look at a digital image that's been altered look like a film photo and think there was good enough, but I don't know.
Well, and this might be a bit of a tangent in our conversation. But one of the things that I thought was particularly interesting and telling and is an example of what you're talking about just a moment ago, is there certain filters and I think in Instagram right off, they became very popular that the filter is trying to make your digital photo look like kind of the
it has accidents on
it look like old Polaroid photos. Now a lot of I know it became a fad a couple of years ago for kids to actually have again, the Polaroid photos, but back in the 80s when you would have the giant size of I don't know like a breadbox Polaroid camera. Yeah, those pictures had a certain look to them, which wasn't necessarily at the time that good No,
it's not and like when you said that about the breadbox, I can remember Do you remember Steve like Flash cubes? Yeah, those those things you'd stick on there and they just and so I think of some Polaroids. A lot of Polaroids that I had were the face would be really bright flashed the background would be all dark. And I you can achieve that look in Photoshop by I'm sure tweaking a couple of exposure levels and darkening your background. On but hey, you could do this just on your own and probably one shot with a film camera.
Yeah, and I guess what's interesting about that is that people really want to emulate that look, which is something that is tied to a physical product that you had, I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the value of having the picture that you as you get it out and are drying it, after you've completed the process, from beginning to end darkroom photography, having that in your hand, as opposed to just seeing it on the screen, what that does to the properties of the photo and how we think about it.
Yeah, this was an actually in reference to my own photographs. But just fairly recently, in the last few weeks, a family member asked me if I had certain photos, and I do have some photo albums from my other family members, like square ones. And they were from the 60s. And I have them. And I remember just holding them, and I was able to appear up close and see how it looked. And I suppose you could do that on camera just blowed up zoom in. But there was something just nice, what I would just lay them all out. And just kind of sit and compare. I don't know that I could ever replicate that same sense of here, look at my phone, let me scroll up and see if I can find those images. But I am so grateful for having images that I can actually hold and carry and store that I don't know that I would feel the same way of hey, my great grandkids, you want to see what grandma look like you know it pull up on a bone, I'm not even sure we would have that I think there will always be a need somehow for some tangible artifacts of a time before. And I don't even know if those digital devices that we could use to view those images will be available years and years down the line. Maybe maybe it'll be better, I don't know.
So one of the things that one can do with a digital camera nowadays is apply a black and white filter, or even have the camera setting to be black and white in some cases. But in the darkroom photography class, you're shooting in black and white Correct? Why do that? Why start out with black and white is it to really show off what you can do with that style of photography to create an image that's intended to be black and white.
Well, I've not done color film processing, I understand it's actually a little more a lot more complicated, but black and white. So developing Black or White would be a lot simpler. But there is something with black and white. And I love color, don't get me wrong. But when you look at a color image, you're looking at an all the range of tones and hues. But when you turn an image black and white, it becomes sort of abstract, you focus on line and form. And things like where the lightest areas in the image are the darkest areas in the image. You aren't distracted by a garish orange tone or something like that. So I think that we start off that because you you can teach simple things like composition line, and all that with black and white photography.
When you're teaching darkroom photography. Now, is this something where when people complete this process, they have to find a lab like like the photo lab, a dark room lab? Or is this something you could actually develop your own pictures in your bathroom?
People people have, it would be great if somehow, online, I actually saw something that were like community dark rooms all across the nation. And the surprising, they're growing smaller and smaller. I thought, man, we have a great setup here. Hopefully, people are taking these photographs of them for themselves of loved ones of things that they enjoy of landscapes they are proud of and like to have. But yes, you could actually that's how it started with me after a few of film photography classes I did. And you I could find people giving away enlargers and trays and things. And so I did have my own darkroom at home until I downsized and donate it back to Heartland actually. So
Well, you mentioned this class is being something that is a little bit of a shrinking resource in the nation overall. Do you see a time when photographers might want to learn this and will really have to search to have something like this available? Is this kind of turning into a dying art?
Depending on who you talk to? I know that a lot of hashtags out there film is not dead or keep film alive. But it is harder to find. I actually had had someone asked me that they had a child at their high school wanting to that they're taking darkroom photo, but where do you find film? And it's where can you find it in tennis? Well, you can at Heartland but also online, but it is going to shrink. I think if there's not a continued interest in wind preserving keep these tangible things with us. And you're right. I would love to see it be revived and maybe not. It won't to the extent of how it was up until the 90s. And when people if they are able to get into a dark room develop their own photos or even if there there are labs that exist in the US, you can send your roles off to to be developed in color. If you happen to take them in color that they will do that for you. I think it's sort of like you know, demand. If once people find out and they they actually like it, maybe there'll be more of an interest to keep those things around.
Well, Bernadette, thanks so much for coming in and talking my pleasure from photography appreciate a lot thanks.
Bernadette cash teaches darkroom photography at Heartland Community College. For more interviews on art, photography, history, science and more. Check out other random acts of knowledge episodes on iTunes, Spotify or audiobook. Thanks for listening
