First you take the picture

Images in the wall

And then you hit the darkroom. In the film days the distance between the two activities could be days or weeks. First you had to finish the roll of film. Waste not, want not. Then watching the timers during all the various baths to process the film. That was the boring part. Though your tummy always hurt for fear that you had done something wrong and ruined the picture you thought you had taken.

And it was expensive. I took several college photography classes in part to have access to the darkroom facilities with and the tools and equipment. Out of college and into color photography I would shop for the best processor I could find. Never the cheap ones like Walmart. Now I have my dry darkroom in my computer. Yesterday was cold and blustery and I spent several warm hours in my computer dark room.

Blue window panes

Sometimes you have to do very little to an image beyond adjust the brightness and contrast. We all did that automatically with the photo enlarger, the negative and photo paper. And sometimes you pushed the limits even in the wet darkroom. Class projects demanded it sometimes. But we were all artists and sometimes we just played around. The wind howling outside my Black Lake Studio yesterday seemed to entice me to stay warm and play.

Do you see Jesus?

And then sometimes there is a photo that requires a little teasing to bring up what you so clearly saw when you snapped the shutter. In this case I first noticed the reflection in the glass in the field taking the picture. When I stood directly in front the reflection was me. So setting up the picture took some teasing too. Getting the light just right which meant standing in a -10 degree wind chill waiting for the sun to pop out from behind a cloud.

Reflections in Time

Then the captions. Sometimes I have noticed the titles come easily. And sometimes not. I also was in the studio yesterday matting and framing up photographs I had printed in Taos. My sister and I each have three that were accepted in an exhibit of New Mexico Women Artists in Raton at the Old Pass Gallery. I was really stumped on titles. I was going to do La Cerva I, II and III as they are all of the same building. My sister and I figured out one before going to bed but that almost made the other two more difficult because they are like a series.

This morning as I awoke the titles were all there in my head: Through a Window Darkly, Window Pane Trip, Windows of My Mind. You might notice windows are a reoccurring theme of mine. So are doors.

Closed

BTW photography is cheaper these days because you don't need that dark room but it becomes rapidly more expensive when you opt to print. I was giving that a lot of thought yesterday. Maybe I need to charge more for my photographs. I began rather low because I was an emerging photographer even though I was a professional painter. I was going by the rule of thumb of three times the cost (print, mat, frame) which I could keep relatively low due to the fact I can mat and frame my own work.

But both my sister and I have won prizes. I have just sold my forth photograph. Time to rethink pricing? They say the economy is getting better.