My first darkroom experience was in my sophomore year of high school, when I really started to get serious about my photography. I started taking a photography class called Photo One. I started taking photo because I knew all the art teachers already and I hung out in their rooms with some of the people that were already taking the class. My photography teachers name is Mrs. C. Mrs. C. is easily one of my favorite teachers. Photo One was all about dark room photography. We each had camera we could take out and learn how to use. I took my own pictures, I had to develop my film and print my pictures myself. It sounds a lot easier than it truly is. There’s a lot that goes into it, and you have to be very precise, and I messed up a lot but I loved it. I felt like I had control over my art. I could change anything to make it exactly how I wanted it. I could change it more than once and have many different versions of the same picture. It also made me feel special because I was learning how to do something that not very many people know how to do anymore. I’m helping to carry on the tradition of an art that is disappearing due to digital cameras. There was one very frustrating part that I still struggle with. That is loading. Loading is putting the film on the reel in the dark so I could develop it.
We practiced in the class a lot by turning all the lights off and closing all the doors. It was easy to make it pitch black because the photo room didn’t have any windows. I was very good at it when we were practicing. I was always one of the first ones done. Unfortunately, when it was real, I couldn’t do it so easily, and it often ended up with me dropping my film on the floor, and me crawling on the floor in complete darkness hoping not to ruin my film.
Next semester I took Photo Two. In Photo Two we learned more of the technical processes like contrast filters, burning, and dodging. Contrast was such a pain at first. I never knew which filter I needed just by looking at the first test. We also learned how to do color printing from color negatives. Color printing I did not like as much of because we had to do color in pitch black, and it is more complicated once you add color into the mix. I went through a lot of color paper very fast. When printing in black and white, you can have the red lights on, and just have to worry about time and contrast. The end of that year, I started going to the photo club after school on Wednesdays. There, I became the photo club president. This really meant a lot to me because everyone, including my teacher had to think I knew what I was doing to make me the club president.
By the end of my sophomore year, Mrs. C. signed me up for AP photo for the next year. AP Photo is mostly a senior class, but she signed me up as a junior to push me even harder and to help me pull out the best work that could. I was also at this point a student teacher. My high school knew that if they could not find me in class, then I was in the darkroom working, or helping out other students. I was in that room so much that I was even responsible to set up the darkroom and close it down at the end of the day. I also taught some of her classes when she couldn't and gave individual lectures for students that wanted to learn more.
I was in AP photo for two years. Both years were spent preparing me for the AP test that we had to take at the end of my senior year. Writing and re writing artist statements, coming up with a concentration, then scraping that one completely, and coming up with a new one. I did that a few different times. There were weeks that I was still in the photo room everyday, but I would just sit and talk to other people to take breaks, and help other people because I was so sick of looking at the same image repeatedly. Each one of my final images for the AP test, for my college scholarships and the senior art show, took about a few weeks to make each because I am such a perfectionist. The hardest project that I did was my sandwiched negative seen below with the self-portrait and upside down train tracks, which is how I got my scholarship the first year. The amazing part about this is that my image was also shown in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh gallery, even before I was a student there. (See image below.) This image was symbolic for much my life was about to change when I got out of high school, and leaving my comfort zone of friends and family. This was something I had never tried before. You put two negatives on top of each other, and print them like that, so you really have to be good at dodging and burning. I also experimented in these years with processes such as sepia toned, blue toned, hand painting on the finished print to add color, chromosidasik, printing a black and white image on color paper, van dyke browns, photo-grams to name a few. I also took this time to play with other cameras such as the Holga camera, and the Slim Black Devil beside the Pentax film camera. By the end of the year, my AP test came back, and I got a two on it, which meant that I got college credits for all of my hard work. Around this time I was also working on my senior art show which I won three Judges Choice awards, and the Favorite Photo award. I was beyond thrilled
