about what

Last night I decided that I would move my rocking chair, into the darkroom. Yesterday, I sat in here, pecking away at this blackberry, sitting in the chair at my enlarger, and felt I could do a little better with this if I rocked while I wrote. On the play list is Santana, Sam Cooke, and Bruce. It used to be Marlabros and the Rolling Stones, but I’ve mellowed. I recall Vaunaget speaking of Pall Malls. Writing in my darkroom, I am reminded of what this is all about. A few years ago,while living in South Philly, I borrowed a book on toning from a friend, the same friend who told me “the trouble with your prints is they don’t have any color”. Of course they had no color, they were black and white. I was left scratching my head over this. An example of being only able to hear what your ready to understand. You can hear something 100 times, but the 101st you get it. I always toned my prints, however any shift of color I believed to be in error. The guy who lent me this book is a great teacher. He presents what is possible, doesn’t tell you how to get there. I had stopped by his studio around Spring 92 and was just floored by a new print he had hung. When I commented on it he probably said something like “any one can make them sharp and in focus” he has a lot of fun with his work. He spent a few minutes with me talking about paper negatives, something I knew nothing of. In a few weeks I stopped by to show him what I worked out, I remember him being surprised at my approach. So anyhow, I,m reading this book on toning 10 years or so after being told I needed some color in my black and white prints. I decide on what process I would try and ordered my chemistry. As I was working this process, I was rereading, fighting problems of staining and such. On one of those rereads I understood what was taking place in a solution of bleach with a salt. I got that the electrons of these salt atoms are very friendly,that they will swap readily with electrons of other salts, the bleach was striping open the silver in the print and the salt was chemically altering that silver. The definition I have for alchemy is “a power or process of transforming something common into something special”. Now for me, you don’t get something special from some formula in a book, like my old friend “MO” would say,”you gotta geek it”. I figured I could use ocean water to replace the package chemical possibly causing different shifts to occur. Until now,I had only heard of Navy photographers using ocean water as a hypo clearing agent while out to sea. These guys in philly would laugh when I would tell them I had a new 56 step process for my photographs. I have to tell you,I have worked it out to a 12 step program. We all know how successful they can be, just so long as you don’t skip a step. What I begin to understand while observing what occurs in my trays, is that these principals are in play at every level of my life