Fun: Your first darkroom!

[Mike Bedford]

Did you begin your photo career by developing your own photos? I did, as a teen back in late 1974. Starting with blue solar prints of box camera negatives and working my way up to 126 and then 35mm, I’ve still got most of my old negatives which include photos of my darkrooms.

With the weather cooling down (even here in LA), it’s nice to sit at home and dig through the old photos scanned to the hard drive.

Here’s a pic of my younger brother helping me in my first home darkroom, circa late-1974 (B&W Polaroid photo). No enlarger at this point, only contact prints. Then a pano of the same room a few years later.

Finally a screenshot of a set of my very first 126 photos as contact prints, 1974-5.

Please post some of your old darkroom facility photos.

[Asher Kelman]

Well done, Mike!

I wish I could find my earliest photos. Then I had a Kodak Brownie Box camera and my pictures were all contact prints. No enlarger just the bathroom light above and a timer!

After that it was a fully equipped pro darkroom down to driers and presses. But that was my Father in Law's escape "man's cave", (in addition his 35' Chris Craft motor yacht).

I have been spoilt and ruined by the digital darkroom!

Too many pictures and too easy to post process in alternate ways!

Asher

[Mike Bedford]

Thanks Asher! Only those of us who paid the traditional darkroom dues can fully appreciate digital ;-) But a yacht, that's another story!

Speaking of Kodak Brownies, I had one from my grandfather and put sheets of photo paper in it to make negative exposures. I then contact printed the paper against another sheet of paper to make the positive.

Here's one from 1978 or so, but for this example I scanned the original paper negative and inverted it in Photoshop. Less work, ha!