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Showerthought: I used to think a perfectly clean negative was the only goal, but now I embrace the dust and hair as part of the print's story.
After a friend in Portland saw a print with a tiny hair in the corner and called it 'hauntingly real,' I stopped fighting my old Durst enlarger's dust issues and just let the artifacts stay, which changed my whole darkroom process last fall.
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hugo6455mo ago
My old darkroom had a leaky pipe that left water spots on everything. After a while, those spots just became part of the final look, like a fingerprint. Fighting for a totally clean print can suck the life right out of it.
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drew_carr675mo ago
That "hauntingly real" comment sounds like someone just being nice. I fight dust and hair every time, it's a sign of a messy darkroom. A clean negative and a clean print are the whole point of the craft, otherwise you're just making flawed work.
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the_river5mo ago
Yeah, I was just reading this old interview with a photographer who said his best prints always had one tiny flaw he couldn't fix... a hair or something. He called it the "breath" of the darkroom. The fight for total clean feels like you're trying to make a machine copy, not a hand made thing. Sometimes the struggle shows, and that's okay.
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