Well for me a changing bag and a developing tank will work in a pinch to get the negatives processed and stable. An extra enlarger wouldn't be that big of a deal as cheap as many of them are these days and the enlarging lenses you could carry back and forth. Yet for me, I just wait till I get home to print. Looking back at the conditions many of the early photographers worked, we should all be grateful for our darkrooms. I haven't worked in a tent yet, but I have thought about it.
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Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Getting Organized
From: Shannon Stoney <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, May 26, 2009 9:10 am
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Do you have a darkroom on the road?
--shannon
On May 26, 2009, at 10:11 AM, Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee wrote:
> Yes, Shannon, that is what I meant. I might come back from a trip of
> many months duration with up to 400 negatives. I will deal with all of
> them before making another trip. There is no backlog of unprinted
> negatives (except right now, I do have a few (about six) very
> difficult to print ones from Iceland).
>
> Weston had no darkroom on the road. And on his Guggenheim trip they
> were rarely away for very long. When they were, he mailed the
> negatives back to Brett, who developed them. I cannot imagine anyone
> ever developing my negatives for me, But I guess he taught Brett how
> to do it and obviously he was confident in Brett's abilities. Still,
> when developing film by inspection, there are judgements to make, and
> no two people will make the exact same decisions.
>
> Michael A. Smith
>
>> > Next: I deal with every negative I make before I make any more. I
>>> either print it or discard it. In this way I learn from my work.
>>> And
>>> since I know what I have done I do not repeat myself. At least it is
>>> easier not to repeat myself when I know what I have done. A major
>>> problem that many photographers have is that they do not deal with
>>> their negatives. Ansel Adams had 40,000 unprinted negatives when he
>>> died, which is why, I contend, that after awhile he just repeated
>>> himself. Edward Weston, on the other hand, printed every negative,
>>> or
>>> he discarded it. He kept growing as a photographer.
>>>
>>
>> I wish I could print every negative before I make another one. But
>> this isn't practical for me: I shoot in TN during the summer, and then
>> go back to my darkroom in Houston in the fall and spring and print
>> them. So, I don't really know what I've got till I get there and
>> develop the film.
>>
>> I think that you, Michael, go on fairly long photo shoots too. And
>> Weston was gone for a long time on his Guggenheim trip. So I think you
>> don't mean literally that you print every negative before you make
>> another one, although that would be ideal for learning. I think you
>> mean you don't keep a huge backlog of unprinted negatives. Right?
>>
>> --shannon
>>
>> Frankly I don't think that it would even add that much to my learning.
>> I don't think that a single negative with a problem would have had the
>> same "Houston We have a problem" type of moment that we have all had
>> when we find a whole roll of film suffers from a mistake.
>>
>> As far as negatives, I keep almost all of them. Only the very worst
>> where it is so totally out of focus or some other problem is found
>> that
>> it makes the college file. Prints I toss often, but not negatives.
>> A show on the Ovation TV network has a show on it that plays every so
>> often is about Ed Weston's wife Charis and interviews her about many
>> of
>> Ed's photos including the Gugenhiem trip. One thing I always wondered
>> is why they didn't take a changing bag and at least develop the
>> negatives from time to time. I suspect the main reason that if you
>> drive 5 hours or so a day and take pictures another 8, the main thing
>> you are interested in then is to eat and rest.
>>
>> Now the latent image is the most prone to damage. I try to at least
>> develop the negatives if its going to be a while before I can print.
>> Prints can wait till I get to them or I am ready to do them. Wait
>> with
>> the negs and adverse conditions may make printing unnecessary. If I
>> were in Tn all summer, Id try to find a darkroom or make another temp
>> one. grin On that Shannon you are now an expert.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
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>
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http://shannonstoney-twors.blogspot.com/
http://branguslane.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonstoney/
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