The Darkroom

The darkroom is a place for artists to get lost — while penetrating the darkness, one tentative step after the other, it’s easy for thoughts to wander. While your average Joe may walk into the small, heated room and feel discomfort, a photographer is on an exciting solo mission with the destination out of sight.The only noise is the faint murmur of the fan in the corner. The only smell comes from the chemicals dripping down the pictures hung above your head.Photography students cherish the feeling of peace and control that comes from the darkroom’s atmosphere. Ella Sinfield (’15), a Photography student at Samo, says that Photography students are fortunate enough to spend class time concentrating on mixing chemicals, trying out different shutter speeds and creating the product they have envisioned.“I think we are so fortunate to have a darkroom. Not many schools have one and not many people can say they’ve worked in one before, because film isn’t as popular as digital nowadays,” Samantha Southerland (’15), a photo student at Samo, said.But why invest so much time and money into film photography when iPhones and digital cameras take instant pictures and are portable?“With film you actually have a tangible object, something you can touch. It seems like when [students] shoot digital, it all just disappears into Facebook and Tumblr. It’s just all ethereal, it’s not real. Film, that’s real,” Martin Ledford, the photo teacher at Samo, said.Film photography is much more complicated than simply pressing a button on a camera. It takes concentration, knowledge and manual labor just to take the picture. Then to develop the pictures, it takes chemicals, a darkroom and money.When taking a picture with a film camera or using manual settings, you have to carefully adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Aperture is the size of the opening in the lens, which controls how much light is let in. Shutter speed regulates how fast this opening closes to capture the picture, which also helps control how much light is taken in. The third component of using a film camera is ISO. ISO indicates how sensitive the film is to light; it is also commonly referred to as film speed.All of these settings need to be carefully calibrated to create the kind of picture that the artist is looking for. Although the process is complicated, for many it is essential.“I prefer film mainly because it is so experimental. With digital you have complete control over every aspect of a photo, and then you can completely warp it using Photoshop,” Sinfield said.Zoe Maestu (’12), a former Samo art student, explained that with film, you are able to feel more connected to the piece and understand it better because you can see the process the artist went through to create it. The availability of the darkroom at Samo gives students a chance to go back to the beginnings of photography and investigate the use of film instead of being stuck in the confines of a digital screen.“With film, it allows people to be artists. Everyone visualizes differently in their head, so when I see students doing film photography, almost no student’s photographs look like the others,” Ledford said.The main problems students have with film photography are that it is expensive and time consuming. Ledford explains that it is for this reason that digital is almost always used commercially. Clients want their pictures quickly and cheaply — digital photography allows you to do that.In “fine art” photography, however, film is almost exclusively used. Ledford said that this is because there is a certain smoothness in film photography that is difficult to acquire with a digital camera. Film also allows professional photographers to slow the process down and be able to stop and really reflect on what they are doing.“You have to know what you’re doing. Sometimes you should use digital for a picture, you just have to know what kind of picture you are looking for,” Maestu said.Even if students don’t end up using film, access to the darkroom gives them the choice of what medium they want to use and allows them to develop an eye for what they are envisioning. It also puts them right into a work environment, one of the main focuses of the Regional Occupation Program classes.“These students are most likely the last generation to be learning about film photography and using a darkroom. This makes them extremely valuable in the professional world because not only do they know how to work with film, they can apply that knowledge to digital photography,” Ledford said.friosfetchko@thesamohi.com