Capture the Moment

As I said in my first blog, I was obsessed with being in the darkroom as much as possible in high school.  I even took at photography course at Johnson County Community College after I graduated high school and before I started college at KU.  The assignment was “Capture the Moment”.  It was right around Fourth of July and the professor gave an example of fireworks, and can you believe half of my classmates came in with pictures of fireworks.  My idea was of a graduate walking through the Campanile on the campus at KU on Commencement.  I knew right away that I wanted to use two negatives with a dodge and burn technique. 

I started off by taking shots of the Campanile looking straight up at it.  Then I took shots of my model in a cap and gown walking in the Campanile.  The problem is that there is a superstition on campus that if you walk all the way though the Campanile before your Commencement, you will never graduate.  So my model, my sister, kept walking halfway through and then backing out so I could take more shots to make sure I had a good one.  Now comes the fun part, being in the darkroom.

I started out with a normal exposure with the negative of the Campanile.  Then it gets a bit tricky.  A dodge and burn technique consists of waving your hands between the enlarger and your photo paper when you are exposing your second negative on the photo paper.  In this case the negative of my sister walking through the Campanile.  I had to wave my hands over everything in the negative except for my sister.  Thus leaving only my sister exposed on the photo paper.  It took a couple of tries to get it right but here is the final product.

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