Parts 18-19

[Day 18 I took a day off due to a migraine, but hell if I'm going to make my post numbers all wonky halfway through! That, plus the peculiarities of word counters got made up for today, so it's a beast of a post. I have no idea how much I actually wrote.]

This was the one part of developing and processing that I actually enjoyed every bit as much as taking the photos and having the final prints. Contact sheets weren't nearly as exciting as a full 8x10 print, but they were still more than a little magic. The moment the enlarger's light clicked off, I slipped the sheet of paper out from under it. I'd already poured the chemicals out into their separate wash bins, and found all the tongs for moving the paper in and out of them. (I also made sure the tongs were clean - I would have to pretty much hunt down and murder a fellow student if I found my pictures contaminated by the wrong chemical at the wrong stage.) I carried the apparently blank sheet of paper gingerly over to the long metal sink that held all the chemical tubs. Not that it mattered with these, but getting anything on the paper, the oils from your fingertips especially, would leave a mark on the print. Then, grinning, I slid the paper down into the first tub, filled with developer. (Well, not quite filled, since I was the only one down here I didn't want to pour out more of the chemicals than I absolutely needed.) I made sure the paper was completely submerged, pushing it down gently with the tongs. Then I set the tongs aside, glanced at the glow-in-the-dark hands of the clock on the wall, making note of where they were. I carefully lifted the side of the tub nearest me, and began to gently tip it back and forth, letting the chemicals swoosh in low waves over the paper. Keeping the chemicals moving meant a more even development, and though technically this was an unnecessary step, I'd always found it kind of soothing, watching the liquid flow back and forth like this. Like watching the ripples in a pond you were poking with a stick, or the waves on a beach slowly rolling in... though the light down here was a little more apocalyptic than most people would find comfortable.
        After about thirty seconds, the paper suddenly changed. A faint ghost appeared on the white paper, and I watched it raptly, seeing the details slowly fade into view, appearing out of nothingness, shadows coalescing out of thin air to collect on the blank page, burning paths across the paper and leaving small images behind... The black border of the page filled in first, then the small, square images of the negatives (though now reversed back to positive images). I peered close, trying to see, but the liquid distorted things, and anyway contact sheets had such small images. Straightening up, I inhaled again - I learned months ago not to breathe in when leaning too close to the chemical baths!
        When it looked like the details had all filled in, I glanced at the clock - and forced myself to count out a few more seconds. The light in here was always deceptive, what looked too dark under the red lights might well be not dark enough out in real light. Using the tongs, I carefully lifted the paper out of the chemicals, letting it drip for a few seconds, peering at the small images, excited to get a first glimpse at the shots I'd taken. Then I slid the paper under the surface of the next chemical, the stop, which would keep the chemicals in the paper from developing any more. Then it was on to the fixer, which would keep the paper from reacting to light any more than it had already. Finally, I slid it into the tub beneath the tap, where cold water was constantly pouring in and spilling over and down the drain. I watched the paper float for a moment, then scampered back across the dark room, to start the next contact sheet exposure. Once I got going, I could have a few prints being processed simultaneously - and with this many contact sheets to run off, that's what I did for the rest of that evening.


        It was after dark by the time I got back to the Mayhew's, and though my eyes were a little bleary from the dim light and the chemicals, I couldn't not check out the millions of thumbnail images. I usually let my prints air-dry, but I'd been too eager that night, and had actually used the miniature hair dryer to dry off the prints so I could bring them back to the house without them getting stuck together. The sheets still smelled pretty strongly of the chemicals they'd been dunked in, but it wasn't really a smell I minded anymore, it was almost comforting. Kind of a halfway between ink and hydrogen peroxide.
        I took a stack of empty sheet protectors out of the back of my negative binder, and set them on the bed as I sat down, the pile of contact sheets on the other side of me. As I looked over each contact sheet, I slid it into a sheet protector and clipped it into the binder behind the corresponding page of negatives, so it would be quicker to find the negatives I needed when I went to make prints. I tore off little bits of masking tape to stick onto the plastic by the images I wanted to make prints of later.
        This quickly added up to an awful lot of little bits of masking tape, so the ones I really really liked, I drew a little star on with the Sharpie.
        My contact sheets were mostly in order, so I wound up mentally re-living the past couple of weeks. I giggled aloud at some of the shots I'd gotten of Caleb, and his cousins. The two girls really were precious. I had a shot of the two of them leaning over a bale of hay, flopped on their tummies, looking down at a small swarm of kittens, and the composition had lined up for a great classic shot. No new artistic ground broken, I was sure, but hey, it was almost guaranteed a ribbon at the county fair. I spent a comparatively long time looking at the shots I'd taken outside in the early morning fog that one day, peering closely to see what details the camera had grabbed hold of and kept for me. A lot of these weren't in my usual style, they weren't half so clear and distinct and...well, postcard-looking, as my shots usually were. But something about them really grabbed me, I couldn't help but smile as I looked at them, my heart rate picking up a bit - I think I really had caught the atmosphere of that morning, the sense of otherworldliness...
        There were a lot of Sharpie stars on that page. Though I wasn't as sure about many of them as I had been of, say, the shot of the girls with the kittens... I was really curious to see how some of the shots worked full-scale. That one of the tree in particular, I was really eager to see how far I could push the contrast of light and dark, of the heavy black but delicate branches of the tree, the pale sheen of the morning sky...
        The pictures of the boys' fort were a mixed bag. I hadn't really gotten the sense I wanted, of an old thing reclaimed and made young again, at least not in the shots of the fort by itself. The ones where the boys were actually working on it were better, and the one with Caleb peeking in through the window was really nice, I was pretty sure I'd be happy with that one.
        And then there were the pictures from Saturday... I sifted through the shots of the woods and creek more quickly than I had the rest. They were pretty repetitive, anyway, though there were a few nice ones in there. But I wanted to see the villa. I was almost scared to get to that roll, like the shots might have disappeared, faded away from the page like developing in reverse, faded from sight in the harsh light of... well, alright, not daylight, but maybe the prosaic light of a desk lamp. I'd seen the images on the negatives, they'd looked fine then, really I had nothing to be nervous about... but my fingers still shook a little as I held up the contact sheet for the first roll I'd taken there.
        I was anxious as hell to get back there - I only had a roll and a half of photos of the villa. I'd been able to squeeze a few extra shots out of each roll (one of the great things about doing your own processing and everything, if you wound the film just right you could always get a few extra frames out of it), but it still wasn't half what I would normally have taken there.
        Still, it had made me more selective about the shots, so there were a higher percentage of good ones. They felt a little more dull than some of the more interesting and unusual ones I'd been taking lately... but I could still sense that they were better than what I would have taken even a month ago. My professor really had been right - you couldn't help but get better if you plowed through taking tons and tons of shots, and paid a bit of attention to what you were doing. My compositions were definitely getting more varied, and I had a much better sense for light and shadow than I used to. I didn't feel the urge to re-imagine any of these shots in color, like I did so many times when I started out in photography - these were perfect in black and white alone.
        I looked through these sheets slowly, focusing in on each tiny image, studying the details the film had remembered and my mind forgotten. There was a really great shot of those iron chairs on the side patio... I'd gotten pretty close up to the detail of the iron work, showing just enough of the chair's frame to make it clear that it was, in fact, a chair, but the bulk of the shot was taken up by the ironwork itself, the intricate swirls and spirals of the black lines tracing gracefully across the image. In the background, mostly out of focus, I could just make out the gray lines of vines set against the bright sky--- I squinted and pulled the page even closer to my eyes, eagerly. Yes! The vines curled a lot just there, and the curves they made created a perfect echo of the ironwork of the chairs! Oh that was going to be a fantastic shot, I couldn't wait to blow it up to full size!
        Grinning happily, I sprawled out on my stomach, the two sheets with pictures of the villa clutched in my hands. I started to examine the rest of the shots - then rolled over and reached toward the desk, scrabbling for a scrap of paper and a pen. As I went along, I started jotting notes of things I wanted to go back and do, different angles on a table, I wanted to see what I could do with that stone bench I'd sat on, and I had to see if I couldn't get closer to that overgrown balcony on the roof, that was such a stunning image and I hadn't done it justice at all yet.
        I walked back around the house, the pictures replacing eyesight, the tiny thumbnails filling my vision. The shot I had tried to take into the window I couldn't quite reach, on the side of the house, I found that the camera had seen a bit more than I had. I'd only seen the vague outlines of a chair, but the camera noticed a lace shawl draped over the back of that chair, and through the screen of the curtains I could just make out a cabinet of some sort in the room, and an ornate-looking rug on the floor...
        Coming back around the front of the house, I could almost feel the trellised wisteria close in around me, its ethereal fragrance flooding in through my nose and spreading through my whole body, filling me with a strange sense of some distant time, some far-removed place... I drew up to the front door, and studied the intricate curls of the door knocker. I frowned a little, and placed my fingers over parts of the tiny photo, seeing if a different composition might improve that one, it was too dull just having it smack in the middle of the frame. I stuck a bit of masking tape over the sides of the frame, marking out the new composition. That should be better...
        Finally, my eyes moved on to the last shot I'd taken of the villa, looking back at the front door through the walkway of wisteria. I held the page close to my eyes, trying to see what details had made it into the shot. The overall composition had worked well, I really would have to lighten that doorway up in the darkroom, but the pinpricks of light through the wisteria were definitely there like I'd hoped. I really liked that shot, I was tempted to make that my first full size print the next day, it evoked everything about the villa in my mind.