Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Negatives and Headphones

Yesterday was the second day of my Black and White Photography class. And it was very exciting. First of all we were supposed to have taken a whole roll of film before class, which I did. This was because during class we were going to remove the film and develop the negative. For those of you who may never have used film a lot because you're younger or something, the negative is the actual film that was in the camera and you have to use specific chemicals in order for the picture to show up on it. From there you can enlarge the image to make the actual prints. We started off class by winding up our film and going over the steps to put it on the dowels and into the canister the chemicals go in. Our instructor had to show us all the steps before we started because the entire process of taking the film out of the little canister you load into the camera has to be done in complete darkness. So what we had to do was open the canister using a bottle opener type thing, cut the end into a straight line, put it correctly onto one of the special dowels, wind it up completely, and place it in the chemical canister. And we were in groups of three so sharing the small table and materials required a lot of teamwork.
The dowel used, the film winds into the grooves

After all of us successfully got our film into the canister and closed it we started the developing process. The whole thing takes about an hour to do all the different steps with the chemical but its a 3 hour class once a week so we have plenty of time. We successfully did all the chemical processes, hung our film to dry, then cut it and slid it into a protective envelope. Next week we're going to get to actually develop pictures. I can't wait!



That night Becca and I ventured to this thing called a Headphone Disco. It was recommended by one of Becca's flatmates and was being held in the Queen Margaret Student Union. We decided to be adventurous and checked it out. And let me tell you, it was a blast!! The idea behind a headphone disco is that everyone wears headphones that the DJ broadcasts the music into. This way there isn't as much noise pollution for those living near the clubs. We were a little confused at first because we didn't realize there were two stations being broadcast so we'd see some people rocking out and had no idea why because the song we heard was nothing like what they seemed to be hearing. We finally found the switch that changed the channels in the headphones and liked having the option of songs. We did however really enjoy one of the DJs in particular. He just played a lot of amazing songs. We were there for almost 3 hours and were not bored once. We didn't know all of the songs but it didn't really matter because no one could hear us if we were singing the wrong words. That's another great part about these clubs, you can shout whatever you want and sing as badly as you want and no one can really hear you do it. It was such a great experience and I highly recommend that everyone try it at least once.



4 comments:

  1. I like the headphone disco idea. The way I sing and the music I like Oh well (LOL). I'm looking forwdard to seeing some of the B/W pics. Take care and have fun and a little studing. Love ya

    Papa

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  2. Did you use a bag you put your arms in to remove the film and put it in the developing canister. I took photography in HS and we had to practice it with old ruined film before we could shoot our own pictures. after rewinding the film into the 35MM film canister, we put that the developing canister and the white plastic reel into a large zippered bag that had "sleeves" with cuffs like on a sweat jacket.You put your arms into the sleeves,took the film out of the film canister and put it onto the white reel. You then put the reel into the developing canister and closed it. You did this all by feel because you couldn't see what you were doing. We also reloaded the empty film canister from a large roll of film in the reverse. That photography class was my favorite HS class. I always wanted my own darkroom.

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    Replies
    1. No we were in a darkroom and just turned off all the lights so we couldn't see anything at all

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  3. Many years ago and I'm talking about late 40s I spent some time in a dark room. It was a closet that had a black blanket over the inside of the door. You opened the door and then closed the door and replaced the blanket. We used a very dim red light to work by. I can remember that we had three pans of liquid. can't remember what they were called. It was great fun. You will have to get your dad to build you a darkroom when you get back and then the two of you can do some great work. You will have to show him how. Love ya

    Papa

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