How does darkroom photography even work?

Throughout my high school experience, the one class I was most intrigued by was my film photography class.

Going into this class, I had absolutely no idea how film turned into pictures. Not many people get the chance to do darkroom photography, as it is expensive to get the amount of supplies necessary. I personally find it to be the soul of photography as an art form. Considering this was the primary way of printing photos for a long time, kudos to those who did it professionally (it is hard work).

Step 1: Mastering the enlarger (or just using it properly)

The enlarger is the apparatus that literally enlarges your 1 inch piece of film into a larger image. Once you get your film locked into it, you can slide the enlarger up and down to size your image right, and use a dial on the side to make it sharper (or more blurry, whatever the inner artist in you pleases).

Step 2: Make a test strip

A test strip is a narrow piece of photo paper (light sensitive paper used for darkroom photography) that you expose to different time intervals in order to find out how long you need to expose the full photo for to get the best image.

Step 3: The chemicals

The first thing you do after making your test strip (or print) is place it in the developer. This is the chemical that makes your image show up. It is super satisfying to watch it appear on the paper. You leave it in the developer for a specified amount of time, usually 1-2 mins. Watching the time is very important for developing photos, as you don’t want them to over/under develop. Whether you can tell that their is something wrong with the image right from the developing stage (too light/ dark or too blurry), you should continue with the rest of the steps because it often looks 10X different under regular light opposed to the red light used in darkrooms.

You then put your paper into a stop bath, which is just water, to stop the developing.

Finally, you put your paper in the fixer, which is the chemical that locks your image onto the paper and smells like vinegar. This step is important because it finalizes the image and makes sure it doesn’t vanish off the paper when you leave the darkroom.

After another stop bath, your print/ test strip is ready to go.

Frame it and give it to your mother.