filmies: it's dark in here

Everyone talks about how great the darkroom is, so I asked a friend about what goes on down in CPC's basement.

90% of the film students, like my friend, are women. Cara said that something happens when you turn out the lights. That at first everyone's worried about getting things wrong—opening the cannister incorrectly and exposing the film, or putting too much or to little of the right chemicals in at the right time. But she said the lab instructor was funny and helpful and (after he freaked everyone out by saying that he'd put the wrong chemical in the developing cannisters) put everyone at ease.

She tried to describe being in the dark like that, with other people she hardly knew. She said and id that because you can't see, you become really attuned to other sensory input. In the darkroom they navigate around by sight and feel.

And unlike my experience with digital, where I can see what I've just shot so that I kind of know what I got in given shoot, with film, there's this hold-your-breath moment right before you look at your developed negatives where you don't know if you have anything. And there's something magical about that moment. She said there's nothing like being able to see the images you worked so hard for, there in a slender strip, ready to be enlarged.