Doing it in the Dark, Part I

Is love really sweeter the second time around?

In the past few weeks I’ve gone back to my one true love after a seductive fling.

I’ve again been spending long hours in the darkroom, a favorite activity that I, and I am sure many others, have put in the back burner to give in to the digital photography seduction.

What made me go back to the darkroom after a long cool off period? Because I can, courtesy of my Brazilian friend Fernanda whose guest room I sequestered for art's sake. Back home, I’ve always had difficulty looking for the materials and resources (paper, film, chemicals, books, hardware, space and CASH) that I wanted and always settled for what was available. If, they were available. Now I have access to everything, leaving me with no excuse to put it off.

I haven’t given up the affair with digital yet, choosing to have something convenient and predictable at hand during lazy or hectic days. But for those romantic moments when time is of no essence, slow hands in the dark never fail to give total satisfaction.

The photography world has labeled darkroom enthusiasts as ‘dinosaurs,’ representing everything that was ‘primitive’ in the field of image making. These dinosaurs, including myself, have actually taken to the label. Dinosaurs, of the reptilian variety anyway, were mighty , romantic and in an odd sense beautiful.
I also take issue with the ‘primitive’ perception, especially by those who haven’t actually gotten even one of their fingers wet in the creative process. The traditional darkroom can be as simple or as sophisticated as you want it to be.(Please click 'read more" below)

I got myself a new enlarger with a VCCE (Variable Contrast Constant Exposure) head that was only available in RP for the cost of about half my kidney (I chose to keep my kidney then). But with all the different printing papers available, I learned that with the Variable Contrast Constant Exposure system, there were mostly variables and nothing really constant at all.
To settle this problem, I also decided to get myself a sophisticated darkroom meter/analyzer that electronically recorded all the variables and put everything in perfect logical order. After going though the analyzer calibration process, I must say understanding digital cameras in my experience, is like taking candy from a baby, however cruel the thought.

But this isn’t going to be another film vs. digital rant. And I’m sure you all would rather look at photographs than read what I can barely write.

The images in this installment are not new. In fact, one of them is over a decade old. Since I can predict that I’ll be spending more time in the darkroom, the newer images will come later.

My wife took this photograph of my son Miguel when he was three. Miguel is now eighteen. It’s amazing how my new enlarger can still read a decade and a half old negative.

This tough looking girl is Hiromi Iwasaki, a Japanese student who came to live with us in Baguio in 2004. No, she’s not a bad girl, I just made her look that way. In fact, she’s one of the most refined ladies we’ve had the pleasure of knowing. The photograph was actually printed in Baguio in 2004. But since I had some sepia toner at hand and lots of spare time, I decided to tone the print.

This photograph of a warrior is a favorite of mine, so I printed it again for the nth time. This time however I decided to experiment with brush development, that is, developing the print with the use of a brush instead of immersing the exposed print in the usual developing tray. The process is a bit more difficult and messy. The borders are inexact, the development can be uneven. The cheap cooking brush I used lost its bristles during the process so that the print would show where the shed bristles settled on the surface. I loved it.

This is a portrait of a young painter named Jef Cablog . He is the warrior in the previous photograph. Jef is a full-blooded Ifialig, a native of Barlig, Mountain Province. In our opinion, he is one the most talented young artists from the Cordillera. Even Ben Cabrera, our national artist, is all praises for this upcoming painter. Watch out for him.

This old man is our ‘visual’ friend. We don’t even know his name, so we just called him ‘old man,’ our friend. I have serious doubts that he knew us at all. Everyday on our way to work, we pass by his newspaper stall. He would be there, a cigarette between his fingers, in animated conversation with the other old timers around him. He invariably had a smile on his lips or had a good laugh with his tangible friends.
One day, we noticed he wasn’t at his shed. For several weeks, we missed him until once on my way home, I saw him again, still with his cigarette but this time not looking as vibrant as he usually did. Suddenly, he looked old. Since the cab I was in got caught in traffic, I was able to grab my camera and take this one frame before the cab started to move. For a few more weeks we saw him at his shed until one day he did not show up, and we never saw him again.

And now a word from my sponsor, this photograph of my wife was inspired by Steve McCurry’s portrait of an Afghan girl. Though my wife is the individual largely responsible for my indulgence in this supposedly expensive and time consuming hobby, just now she informed me that she just finished cleaning the bath and for sometime I can’t do sepia toning. Bummer.