Darkroom days: those days of youth

10 Nov 2024

Somewhere between the ages of eighteen and nineteen, in my design school days, I developed my own film in the darkroom. As I recall the details of this process, what seizes me as I think back to this time in my life is the excitement and enjoyment I derived from this and many other experiences in those school days more than a decade ago.

Developing film is a many-step process, out of which the first step—transferring the film from the cassette (the casing that houses the roll of film) into a lightproof container—was always the hardest. We would go two at a time, for much-needed moral support and a helping hand, into a tiny room with nothing but a small ledge for us to sit and place our items on. I'd imagine we would have taken a deep breath before we closed that door, well aware that daylight would be a while away—hopefully sooner and not later.

There, we would fumble in pitch darkness as we made multiple attempts to use a key to pry the top off the film cassette. This takes force and skill, even more so when you are relying solely on your sense of touch. The length of our stay in complete darkness depended mainly on the time it took for us to open the cassette, after which inserting the film properly into the lightproof container was, in comparison, a relatively easier task. It always felt like forever—our stay in that tiny room—we had no sense of time in that infinite darkness, and it was always disorienting when we finally walked out.

That first step was just one of many in the entire process of developing film. Following which, reminiscent of secondary school days in the science lab, we would, with great precision, measure out chemicals and pour them into the container holding the film for specific amounts of time. When complete, we'd be able to unroll a long strip of film negatives and catch a first glimpse (albeit tiny and with inverted colours) of how our pictures turned out.

Using an enlarger (a machine that looks similar to an OHP or overhead projector, of which I have several happy childhood memories of), we would enlarge the negatives of selected pictures onto photo paper. We'd spend a long time standing in front of the enlarger, carefully sizing and positioning our images and adjusting their focus. Then, one touch of a button and a flash later, and our time at the enlarger would come to an end.

The photo papers would still be blank at this point. Only after another science experiment of submerging them in various chemicals at set times would we finally hold a print of our photograph in our very hands—a picture so long in the making, through a process so complicated and lengthy, one that required us to get our hands dirty, all that effort exerted for the single print in our hands. As you can well expect, I felt great satisfaction as I held the photographs that my hands had made. The whole experience for me was incredibly rewarding.

I remember those days in the darkroom with fondness, and as I look back on those days of my youth, I find the common threads running through them—the freedom to explore without pressure to perform, a passionate engagement in activities of interest and finding pleasure in them, and a satisfaction in the work of my hands.

Back then, I had the opportunity to explore various photographic mediums. I took pictures with a self-made pinhole camera (made of just a black film canister, a small piece of the aluminium seal from a Milo tin and some black tape) and developed the mini photos in the darkroom. I made prints using cyanotype—after coating paper with a chemical in the darkroom, I layered on objects to form a design and exposed them in the sun—creating beautiful Prussian blue prints.

I had a blast during elective modules too. When I took a module on textile exploration, going to the workshop became the highlight of my school week. I had the most fun assembling silk screen frames and doing my own silk screen prints. I even screen printed a Totoro on my clunky white MacBook—my faithful school companion at the time.

It was in creative writing (an elective module) that I scored my highest grade (a distinction) in those three years of study. I can say with confidence that I enjoyed every bit of that module. Unlike my core design modules, where I was an average student even with my best efforts, here I excelled with natural ease. I lapped up every writing assignment, eagerly putting words to the stories and experiences that came to mind.

Tracing back to earlier days, Design and Technology, which I took for two years in secondary school, was also one of my favourites. I loved being in the workshop, amongst all the big machines and tools, working away with my hands to produce an object of my design. It was an immensely satisfying experience.

Now I see that I have always enjoyed working with my hands, specifically in the act of creating. Conceptualising ideas, working on them, solving problems along the way and finally beholding the work of my hands—my brainchild—it's an unbeatable feeling.

I liked being a student and having all these opportunities to learn and experience something new without the need to perform. Though I worked towards getting the best possible grades I could, doing well (or not) was simply a by-product of the learning process. The learning and doing was not a means to an end but rather an end in itself.

Viewing learning and doing as an end in itself—this is something that I've only recently come to rediscover. Perhaps it was a result of adulting and being part of the working world, but without realising it, I had come to possess a result-oriented mindset, and I assessed the value of things worth doing by the outcomes they could achieve.

Before I left, when a friend asked me what I would do in my spare time overseas, I told her some of my considerations—learning a new language or learning coding, as they were things I found interesting—then followed immediately by saying something along the lines of:

"But I'm not sure if I should do that. It'll be unlikely that I'll have a chance to put these skills to use in the future. I'll just end up forgetting whatever I've learnt—what's the point? Maybe I should be taking up a course related to my line of work instead so that I can stay relevant for when I come back."

My friend, of course, then wisely told me to just pursue what I enjoyed. I was probably unconvinced. Back then, when I measured life against the backdrop of eternity, nothing really seemed to matter or to be worth doing at the end of the day, especially when they regarded my own personal interests and desires.

There is nothing better for people to do than to eat, drink, and find satisfaction in their work.

Like the shifting of tides and quite by chance, things have begun to change for me. I am now discovering things that I want to do. I'm enjoying the doing itself. And I'm finding satisfaction in it all. After suffering from a lack of motivation for a prolonged period, it has been refreshing to finally feel so excited about doing something again, though I do need to learn to better manage my hyperfixations—eating and sleeping have become mere afterthoughts when I'm on a roll, and the thought that pervades my waking hours is of how I want to do this and how I wish I could do it now.

Last week, I spent a few days down the grammar rabbit hole as I re-edited all of my blog posts. Despite many proofreads on each entry before posting, there were still, to my surprise (and horror!), a number of errors in grammar, punctuation and even spelling! Who would have thought that I didn't know how to spell nerve-wreckingracking?

Also, I had no idea that punctuation had so many rules and nuances, as I had all along relied on my internal language compass to guide me in writing and speaking—the I-have-no-idea-what-the-grammar-rule-here-should-be-but-this-sounds-right radar. It turns out that peppering commas in the pauses I heard in my head was a mistake, and there is such a thing as a dependent clause and an independent clause. It amazes me that there is so much that I don't know, and it feels good to still be learning new things at my age (and no, I'm not all that old).

Then, for the past four days, all of my spare time has been spent staring at CSS codes as I laboured to customise the layouts for both The Jotter Nook and A Book of Days. Well, I am absolutely chuffed about the results! Please take a look if you may be so inclined. It even has a light and dark mode! I didn't code from scratch (I can't), but I messed around with the code quite a bit to achieve what I intended design-wise.

I spent quite some time trying to get the randomiser on A Book of Days to work. It took quite a bit of trial and error to find out the cause of the problem—it turned out that the <span> tag couldn't be too close to the <div> tag, so I had to insert a line break between in order to fix it. I felt a great sense of achievement after that solve. That's the part I've always liked about coding (I dabbled in HTML and CSS as a teenager)—the problem-solving aspect, the trial-and-error process and the aha moment of the solve have always excited me.

Now that I'm done with the layouts, the next thing I'm buzzing about is writing. I have a list—if you could call it a list; it's more a disorganised page of phrases and half-formed ideas jotted down in haste—of things I want to write about. There's even a chance that I won't remember the meaning of my brief notes by the time I revisit them. I literally type keywords that would hopefully serve as triggers for when the time comes. Sometimes my spontaneous ideas and thoughts don't even make it into the list because my mind wanders away before I have a chance to remember to write them down.

I'm not sure what it's like for others, but for me, turning these hastily typed notes into a blog entry is not an effortless process. This is likely the longest piece of writing I've ever done, and it has been many days in the making, which is why I never fail to be amazed by those who are able to post lengthy essays almost daily.

As for me, I labour over every word¹ that I publish, putting much thought into the choice of words and the flow and sound, so as to accurately capture the voice inside of me. And by that I mean not the sound of my thoughts (I don't write the way I speak or think), but the voice of the writer within me—who happens to favour a rather formal tone of expression.

These recent pursuits of mine have been laborious, but I've been enjoying every minute of it. And though no one I know in real life will hear of these achievements—this being my secret world—yet let me say it just once. If anyone asks me what's something I'm proud to have accomplished in my period of unemployment abroad, it's this—writing about my life anonymously on a personal blog I started and using code to customise the site's design ৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻)

I do miss my darkroom days—those days of my youth—a time free from the clutches of growing up and adulting. Nevertheless, I am comforted that the spark I once had and lost has now been rekindled. And this time, my friend, let it burn long, and let it burn bright.