Black and White Photography

indicator such as a green dot in the camera’s viewfinder that lights up when the
subject is in focus. For manual focus, you turn a focusing ring on the barrel of
your lens until you see the subject become sharp as you look through the
camera’s viewfinder.
Once your picture is composed, the exposure set, and the subject focused,
press down on the shutter button to take your picture. Be very careful to hold
the camera steady while you press the button; if your camera moves during the
exposure, you may get a blurry image.
Rewind the film and remove it from the camera. At the end of a roll of film, many
cameras wind the film back automatically into its cassette. If your camera
doesn’t have automatic rewind, you’ll have to rewind it manually by first pressing
a button (or sliding a switch) on the camera body and then flipping a crank
on the rewind knob and slowly rotating it in the indicated direction. Once the
film is safely back in its cassette, you can open the camera back and remove the
film cassette.

Taking pictures is one part of the equation, but just as important are the steps
of film developing and printing. Developing turns your film into a reversed
image, or a negative—dark areas appear light or clear on the film and light
areas appear dark. This all happens in a succession of chemical baths.
You can send film to a processing lab for development, but you can also
process it yourself. You don’t even need a dedicated darkroom, which is a room
generally used for film and print processing. Developing your own film helps
guarantee that your film will be carefully handled, which isn’t always the case
at processing labs. It also gives you more control over the final results. For
example, you can increase or decrease the overall image contrast by extending
or reducing the developing time.
Once you have negatives, you can make positive prints. This process is more
complicated than developing film and requires a darkroom, but it is relatively
easy to learn. You put the negative in an apparatus called an enlarger, which
projects the image onto a sheet of photographic paper. Then you put the paper
through a series of chemical baths similar to those used for developing film.
You can send your negatives to a processing lab for printing, and many labs
produce excellent results. But a lab technician can’t predict exactly how you
want a picture printed. Even if you have labs make your prints in the future,
knowing how to make prints gives you an idea of what kinds of results are
possible and how to communicate what you want to achieve.
The best reason for learning how to make prints, as well as develop film, is
to take control of the process. You’ll soon see how much of a difference you
can make with simple techniques to frame the image exactly the way you want
it, make a print darker or lighter, alter the contrast of a negative or a print, or
selectively darken or lighten specific print areas. Aside from the control it
offers, successfully developing film and making prints can be very satisfying—
even exhilarating. Some photographers actually like darkroom work more
than they like taking pictures.
The rest of the text discusses other approaches to taking pictures and making
prints which may give you ideas on how to produce your own visual style. It
also covers various ways to finish a print—by changing its overall color, retouching
it, and matting or mounting it.
When you have completed reading, you will have learned all the techniques
necessary to make excellent black-and-white prints. You also will have learned
much of what you need to know when photographing in color or by digital
means. However, a book can only carry you so far. Like most skills, good
photography comes from practice and hard work. The good news is that you’ll
have a lot of fun along the way.