My hands are still soaked with the smell of developer, stop and fix. For some the smell is awful and hard to live with but for me it is a simple reminder of the joy of being in the darkroom. Yesterday I spent 7 hours printing my favorite photographs and although my feet hurt from standing for so long, I walked away with the joy of living my passion.
The darkroom is saturated with analogies that help me understand photography as a way to experience life. You need to go into the dark in order to produce something. You need time and patience to see anything develop. Printing takes an almost scary amount of perfection, yet no matter how hard you try you can always do better. Moments you thought could not be experienced again come back to life. It is a sanctuary from the loud and bright world.
I am still learning a ton about how to develop and print. I am learning to care about my work enough to spend hours on one image. Being in the dark room is humbling, you throw away more prints than you keep and every time I am in there I question every desire I have had to follow my passion. I think I need a passion that will continue to humble me for the rest of my life; I need to love something that will push me to discover more. I love being in the darkroom and knowing that I am at least trying to create, trying to discover and trying to understand more about this beauty called photography.
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