needs more contrast

Remember that photography class I took? Remember those prints I made? The ones that had good lights and darks and were very crisp and all that. I thought those were good, and that was my first time in the darkroom. First time with film and a non-automatic camera. I didn't even use a tripod. That photography class got me really psyched. In this photography class I spend three hours trying to get a white and a black on a single image. Five prints and none of them perfect. Kept on raising the contrast and raising the contrast and trying to keep the white which is hard when you need that dark. In the end I couldn't even get ONE good print. Looking forward to more work on Monday, might go in with Christopher over the weekend. Have to shoot another roll, whee fun.

I just don't get it. Those prints from Olympic College's photography class, I would do the test strip and figure out which second and then I'd do the print. The bonsai tree one I got on the first go, no problem. I think the one of the reeds and the water at Elandan Gardens was the first, maybe second print after the test strip. I did lots of the print that I gave to Jeanette and none of the later ones I did were quite as good as one of the first prints (that one I think came out on the second try). All of those had pure white and pure black and I did it really quick without having to fiddle about for hours on different magenta settings. I didn't even know there was a magenta setting to fiddle with. Now I can't even get a white and black on the same print unless I spill white out on a photo of of Ibanez. Hopefully with a roll of better photos I can find some success in my prints but for right now AHHHG FRUSTRATED!!

Biked down 14th instead of 12th today. Pretty nice straight shoot, though the bike lane on the left disappears and reappears on the right for some reason.

2D design was frustrating. AND on top of the whole printing fiasco I had to show Richard and James how to make prints/develop prints/explain the enlarger/all this other stuff because the teacher...I dunno what she was doing but I guess she didn't want to re-give the lecture to people who miss class. I tried my best to explain, I hope they get it.

My performance piece, also of the "uhg" variety. Two members were late in coming and I was almost thinking we would have had to give our performance with two people playing four roles which actually might have made it better than the quick, almost skit-ish piece we did give. Okay sure no one else had any ideas so I can't really diss the idea itself. We went first and it was really really short. A minute shorter than it was required to be, and it was required to be 2-3 minutes. Then there was a critique and it was really nice how people managed to get some meaning out of it. The next two were pretty amazing pieces, really well thought out and I could see me seeing them at TBA:08. I wish so many of my ideas hadn't been shot down now, might have killed some time. Oh well. Then we took a break and came back and a group did Thriller as part of their performance, it was pretty great. And another great, lots of meaning squeezed out of it, performance ended our performance art section. So glad to be over with it, moving on to animation.

Stress-free for the rest of the day.

Well on the plus side when I told Sally about my zoom technique she said in her twenty years of photography she had never heard of it before.