PHOTO LABS: WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT

Recently across the United States, many high schools and colleges/universities have been shutting down their dark rooms, companies stopped selling film, and people just stopped learning about film photography or photo processes. A lot of people either don't know why this is happening. A lot of people don't care and don't think it is important. And for some reason a lot of people are against having photo labs running. 

In high school when the dark room was being closed down, I didn't care. I was a digital photo kid, not a film kid. I still am, but that doesn't mean that I don't support it and find that the results people get from film photography is stupid. It's gorgeous. I have taken a few classes about the historic photo processes: cyanotypes, van dyke browns, salt prints and work in the photo lab. I think that if you are going to call yourself a photographer, or I'll even go to say, if you are going to call yourself an artist you need to take a photography class. Any kind of photography, digital or film, you will learn so much about composition, tweaking a final image, and critiquing that will be amazingly helpful in whatever process you do.

What made me want to write this post was mainly because many people don't realize the amazing prints that can come out of these processes. There any so many techniques that are so much more amazing when done by hand than by digitally editing an image. For instance, this 35mm film print is a double exposure. It's not just laying two images over each other with 50% opacity in Adobe Photoshop.

Ryan Teed, Alley, 35mm Double Exposure & Sequentially Toned

Other historic processes like Cyanotypes, Van Dyke Browns, Salt Prints, and Gum Prints create beautiful hand made prints that are literally one-of-a-kind. These processes are not being taught as broadly anymore and are quite rare to find, therefore their worth goes up, but popularity goes down. Here are just some examples to make you in awe of the gorgeous types of photography people are missing out on:

Aisling Housel, Flowers 5, Cyanotype

Leyla, Van Dyke Brown

Ryan Teed, Mask 1, Gum Print

 Most of these processes include mixing the emulsion in a dark area, and painting it on, exposing it, and then developing your print. There are many ways to change the image during the process to create weird effects that are worth it in the end. It's all science so experimenting and testing things out is what is the most fun about it, just don't forget they're also chemicals so you have to be really careful!
Slaving over a perfect print for an hour versus clicking a few buttons? All depends on what it's worth to you. But the ending result is something amazing and valuable.

Photo Cites:
Film - Alley: http://rnteed.wix.com/teedphotography
Cyanotype - Flowers 5: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aisling-Housel/207239936104721
Van Dyke Brown - Leyla: http://leylaphotography.com/#/van-dyke-brown/
Gum Print - Mask 1: http://rnteed.wix.com/teedphotography#!historic-processes/c14ak