Introductory B&W Darkroom

Explore technical and artistic aspects of photography to work more creatively in the field and the darkroom

Student Image by: Kelley CrawfordThis course is for the examination of the world without the distraction and embellishment of color—a world of texture, shape, and light—as can be shown through the basic techniques of manual photography and the darkroom. 

Students learn how to use their camera, lens, and tripod. They are shown how to select the right film and use a light meter to determine exposure, as well as how to control basic density and contrast for both the negative and the print. And they prepare the chemistry for and undertake the development of their own film. 

The class discusses how to make the best possible negatives and prints with full tonal range and explores basic darkroom procedures, safety, printmaking techniques, burning and dodging, toning, archival processing, and print presentation.

Students are encouraged to explore artistic questions concerning composition, framing, light, tone and texture, gesture and moment, along with their own personal responses to the visual world and events around them. This course is a stepping-stone to the great world of photographic images, from its foundation to the many possilities it offers. 

 

Instructors

Deanna Witman

Deanna Witman is a fine art photographer living and working on the coast of Maine. She holds a M.F.A in Photography from Maine Media College and a B.S. Degree in Environmental Biology from Kutztown University.

Trained as both artist and scientist, she searches for metaphysical understanding and meaning amongst the rocks and trees. Through her own dictionary of myth and metaphor, she takes us into a realm which is at once both ephemeral and memorial. Timeless, in bared skin, primordial- she hopes the camera captures a glimpse of the soul.

She chooses to work with the pinhole camera because of it's capacity to capture time as she sees it, or more specifically how she experiences it, with its inherent dualities. The exposures range from a mere second to many minutes- both equally valid of what a moment can be. Moving the shim across the pinhole to allow the light in, for the moment to record on the film has become ritual. Metamorphosis is a frequent consequence of the temporal aspect of her process, slowly unexpected forms emerge, un/becoming- figures in the work suggest ephemeral states and exists within primordial realms.

The photographs are obsessively sought and exist privately in the longing to communicate intrinsic thoughts and experiences. A measure of existence, a rhythm with the Earth's breath, a communion with the crust of dead leaves and soil that give life and shape to her imagination and being.

These images were created in camera with one negative exposed using a large format pinhole camera. The images are hand printed in sliver halide on fiber paper and toned. Ten prints are made from each negative. All images are untitled, accompanied by the year the corresponding negative was created.

Deanna teaches photography at Maine Media Workshops, Rockport, Maine, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and Project Basho, Philadelphia. Her work has been published and exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in many private collections.