It was the olden days of enlarger’s and safe lights. There were the steps to develop you own B&W film. Who can't forget loading the film onto the developing spool in total darkness, before putting it into the can. There was test prints and dodging and burning. Notebooks of possible negatives to print, so making proof sheets was the way to go. You exposed a sheet of photo paper to light from a negative and then run it through several chemicals. You got your fingers a little stinky with developer and stop bath. You next run it through the fixer and then the water rinse. I did not even mention the fun stuff like sepia and selenium toners. This was the pure art form of Black & White. Here, I will not even go into the steps involved to print color photos.
There was 35mm, 120 or 2 ¼. I had a 4x5 enlarger. That doesn’t even include 110 film, 16mm Minox spy film. I remember my stereo playing Pink Floyd and Deep Purple as I printed late into the night and even the early morning. I even put safe light material over my small T.V. so I could watch sitcoms or movies while I printed away the hours. What a special time and a special place was the darkroom. Then of course, there was the 90’s haircut!
