In The Dark

I have been a bit negligent of my blogging duties as of late. Not that my life has had any major impacts to it lately. Well, not unless you call turning a year older a major impact. But other than that, I've just been either too busy or just too damned tired to even know one day from the next.

My days are now consumed by work and photography. If I'm not at work then I am at school, either in class or in the photo lab.

My photography class is a trip. The instructor is teaching it without a course book. I'm glad I have both of the course books that the other instructors use for this class though. It makes it much easier to go back to them and reference if I'm not too clear on what the instructor just covered in class for the week.

So far I have already developed 4 rolls of black & white film and made a few contact sheets. That was a lot of fun, considering we were all going about it totally in the dark, so to speak. Not only were we in the dark when we had to load our film on the film reels for the first time, we were pretty much in the dark in how to do it. Just some basic instructions and we were thrown into a dark room to load the film.

Let me tell you. That is a whole lot harder than you think when you can't even see you hands in front of your face, let alone not being able to see where your rolls of film are and the reels to load them onto. I had a fresh roll of film that I had shot that same day at work and 6 other rolls that I had taken earlier in the year. I developed 3 out of the 6.

I could definitely tell which rolls were which as I was loading them. The fresh roll I had no problem loading. The second roll was one of the older ones, I struggled the longest with that one. After wrestling with that one the other two weren't so bad after I figured out how to deal with first one. I was surprised that I managed not to fuck them up too bad. Not bad for my fist time, ever, developing film.

The first contact sheet I developed turned out decent. The other 3 were a disaster though. I was just too damn tired and was not paying attention when I went to put the paper in the developing solution. So they all came out pretty fucked up. After that I just said fuck it and called it a night. There was no use in wasting any more paper.

I aquired a new camera to use in the class. I found a Yachica rangefinder on e-Bay for a decent amount. The picture up top is the one I bought. (Kind of funny, taking a picture of the camera with my digital camera.) It came with an external flash and a nice old leather bag. I was looking to get a Leica rangefinder, the king of all rangefinders. However, even a used one you are looking at spending hundreds of dollars. They are worth every fucking penny though! One of these days I will own one, damn it!

The Yashica is taking a bit of time to get used to. I'm not used to the focus on it, it messes with my eyes a bit. The weight of it is pretty heavy compared to the newer cameras that are being made today. Gripping it is a little uncomfortable. I know with time it will become like second nature to me. Until then I am just fumbling along with it until it I get used to it. It's the pictures I take with that little number that I am really looking forward to the most. I dunno, to me, there is just nothing like taking a picture with older cameras. This particular camera was made around 1973, almost as old as me!

Okay, off to bed with me! Hopefully I'll have some pictures to scan and post soon.