Processing Film
I have decided that I would much rather print than develop film. Developing film will definitley impede on my artistic ability - - assuming I have any ability at all. I have decided that I am in need of an assistant.
Last night we developed our film for the 1st time in my darkroom class. (I have been printing already processed film because I did not know how to process my own film). Now I realize that I was not missing anything. Anyhow, I am the only student using stupid 120 film (notice the film is stupid now). The problem with 120 film is that it has paper on the back of it! Ordinarily this should not present a problem, but I managed to spend 20 minutes in absolute darkness trying to load the paper-backing onto the stupid reel before I realized that I was not holding the negative. (Trust me, it's difficult to tell them apart in the dark). Then I spent another 15 minutes loading the stupid negative. THEN when I walked out of absolute darkness only to realize that I had the stupid lid on upside down and had just exposed the roll of film to light... You can only imagine what came out of my mouth at that point. As a result I had to start ALL OVER again!
We are supposed to learn things in school. My lesson from last night is that I would rather pay the $4 to have my negatives processed by a "professional." Once I have my correctly processed negatives, without the pain of a headache, I can then let my "creative/artistic" abilities take over. Unfortunately, I am stuck having to do the processing on my own, at least until the class is over with. Hopefully I will not ruin all of my film and will have something to print and display when I am done. Oh the joys of photography.
In case you were wondering, the second roll of film was processed correctly and I have a perfectly processed negative. However, if I were to analyze this under a means/gains analysis, I am not convinced it was worth it. The only thing that made me feel slightly better after the whole experience was that I did not try to process a color roll of film using a B&W process like someone else did in my class. I'm quite certain that anyone who cannot discern color film from B&W film should also consider hiring an assistant.
10:19:11 AM 
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