First Day of Developing 1/18/15

Today was the big day! I developed my first two rolls of film all by myself! When I got into the darkroom I suddenly was hyper aware of all of the things that could go wrong: not roll the film on properly so that the images are ruined, not keep the chemicals in long enough, leave the chemicals in too much, and so on, and so forth. My very first run wasn't the cleanest. I slipped up and made some very dumb and obvious mistakes. We'll start with the fact that when I poured the developer into the light safe canister and started agitating the solution all of a sudden large drips of developer started going all over the counter. The problem you ask? I forgot to put the cap on the canister. Silly stuff like that.

Leaving the cap off was a stupid mistake but there were other issues that I encountered. When I first learned the process Andrew was standing right next to me and confirming that I was doing everything right and if I started doing the wrong thing he would stop me. In this new environment I was all on my own. Standing alone in the dark I was all of a sudden freaking out about whether I had rolled the film on straight or whether the little holes along the edge of the film had securely latched on to the prongs on the film spool. I must have rolled and unrolled the film 5 or 6 times before I finally threw my hands up and said that it was my best try and I had to move on in the process.

I practiced over and over before I went back into the pitch blackness. Even after all of the practice, rolling by feel is very difficult. 

Thankfully I was able to get my very first roll of film developed through all of my second guessing. However, we shall see the the true quality of the pictures when I get the negatives under the enlarger.

Unrolling the film and seeing Zoe's face was beyond relieving after the first debacle.  

Some more results from the first roll that I developed. 

 After the first run the second one seemed unbelievable easy. Once I got into the rhythm of the process I was able to relax and at one point sing really loudly to all of the best Jackson 5 songs. The darkroom is a place of peace and solitude and I foresee spending many more nights there. To say the least, my time in the darkroom was successful and there will be updates on the prints soon!