I miss the

Darkroom.

A lot.

I miss not having access to a place to process pin hole camera film/negatives. I miss shooting black and white film, developing it and printing it on F4 paper.

I started doing black and white photography when I was 14 or 15, I had my first camera long before that. In high school I used the dark room occasionally, and in college, having a bio department darkroom virtually all to my self was a luxury I was able to appreciate then. The Art Department's darkroom was always packed, loud and not easy to just focus. Not to mention you couldn't flip the lights on (after checking to be sure the paper was put away) real quick to see how the exposure looks right after it went into the fix bath.

Those smells.

The last degree factory I worked at there were two darkrooms, a student darkroom and the research one. Then we got a new scope and gutted the student darkroom. And then I came here to an already gutted darkroom. If you've seen the flickr account you'll know there is a group of just pinhole stuff. I have most of the stuff for a dark room in the basement of the house now. So many labs have closed up that the only thing I'm missing are chemicals and paper. Maybe it is getting time to set that up finally. Not that I need another project to add to the list of things to do. But it just sort of hit me today. I miss it. Rolling a cassette full of film in the absolute dark onto a holder and sticking it in the tank, doing test strips... selecting the negative.

Digital stuff is a close second. SEM is even closer because it takes time to acquire the image. It doesn't just appear. maybe I'm just being nostalgic... but i don't think it is all nostalgia, there is some genuine dismay at not spending any time in the darkroom, with the big sodium vapor lights buzzing away...

sigh

-g