Digital Photography: Emulating Dark Room Techniques

Thanks to my mentor in Peru, a German photographer who moved to Lima in the 80’s, I started taking pictures using slide film. During all the years that I shot on film, I might have shot ten rolls of black and white at the most. That’s all. When you shoot slides, you must be very precise with the exposure (very narrow exposure latitude). There is no room for mistakes. If you underexpose, you will lose details in the shadows. If you overexpose, you will lose details in the highlights. If your subject has areas with very different, extreme tones, you must choose which details you are going to lose. The color saturation, and high contrast that slides offered always appealed to me.

With black and white, the film is more forgiving because its exposure latitude is much broader. There is a lot of room to play with. In the lab, you can burn and dodge areas in the print to get those details. With slides, what you shoot is what you get.

Today, with digital cameras, shooting in RAW format, and using photography software, you can replicate dark room techniques digitally. Granted, Adobe Lightroom has many more tools …

So, I shoot in color, but I can “develop” the image in black and white. I can increase contrast and enhance the image to show the vision I want to share.

I took this picture in Montreal a couple of weeks ago. I spent a week there training Aikido at a summer camp. This is a picture of a woman crossing the street taken from the 17^th floor of our hotel. I really liked the late afternoon long shadows. I hope you like them, too.