Photo by Emily Greenblatt made with pinhole "check box" camera on T-Max 400 film with a 30 second exposure.
Film is so -- yesterday!
At least that's what I thought until I got a call a few weeks ago from Emily, an 8th grader at the Siskiyou School working on a pinhole camera project.
Today, Emily processed her first successful batch of negatives from her handmade pinhole camera. Yahoo!
The camera is made out of a bank check box. It's about 5 inches long and 2 inches wide. Emily's excitement about the project has renewed my own passion for photography, even though I haven't worked or taught in a darkroom in five years.
Everything I've been involved with in photography during my teaching career has been increasingly focused on understanding digital technologies. Going back into the darkroom at this stage in my life, I admit, is a little odd.
The darkrooms at Southern Oregon University are located in the art department. A few years ago, the school opened a visual arts center and the labs are incredible.
The best part of all of this is that no matter how long a person has been making pictures the process can still be fresh and exhilirating. Through Emily's experiences I can remember the magic of processing film as if it were yesterday, even 30 years later.
Watching Emily discover the magic of photography and her easy-going acceptance of not getting the perfect picture the first time around is very rewarding.
We cannot go back in time in photojournalism, but working with Emily reminds me that sitting in front of a computer screen toning images with Photoshop can never replace the feel of the darkroom. I guess it is the glow of the safelight and the smell of fixer that bring it all back.
In a digital age, I will admit that there is something different and alienating about the interface between human and machine. Maybe getting lost in a darkroom for hours never felt like work. Never.
The photo lab had its own culture when I worked at newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s. The darkroom, for many photojournalists, was a place to socialize and focus on the artistic and creative side of what we did every day. That feeling seems more elusive today in a digital environment. Under the glare of a computer monitor the process feels somehow a little less inviting.
Nevertheless, Emily is making pictures, which is still a very cool thing to do. It's refreshing to see someone getting the photobug with a technology that even if it is "so yesterday" can remain "so real" today.