Never. In Europe we use a friend's darkroom in the Netherlands, but that is after the trip is over. We use it so we do not have to take exposed and undeveloped film through airport security. Our old Super XX film has enough film base plus fog as it is.
While we are on the road we never develop film. We take our chances. Michael
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. Ieither 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. MarkTo unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.=============================================================================================================To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.http://shannonstoney-twors.blogspot.com/ http://branguslane.blogspot.com/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonstoney/ =============================================================================================================To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.
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