Before June 4th 2012 I had never been inside a darkroom. Hell, I didn’t even know my school had a darkroom. I have spent the last eight weeks having one of the most amazing experiences of my life learning darkroom techniques and now I can’t get it out of my system. I CANNOT bring myself to hand my rolls of film over to the 17 year old attendant at Duane Reade and expect my babies to be looked after. These are MY BABIES, conceived in sweat from the sweltering NYC sun, and blood from trying (and failing) to balance on a fence in Central Park to get my composition perfect. No. Having my babies developed at Duane Reade would not do. I have to develop my own film.

Luckily, I had found this awesome post on Shawn Hoke’s Blog way before I was addicted to the smell of developer. I knew I needed chemicals and a dark corner? to load my film and Shawn’s instructions helped me streamline my ideas. I have a trip to B & H Photo Video planned for later this week to pick up a changing bag, fixer, developer and chemical storage bottles. At school we skipped on stop bath and used water,  and used perma wash and photo flo but for now I’m trying Shawn’s method and maybe later I’ll add the other chemicals to the process if I deem them necessary.