What the Evolution of Photography Taught Me

When I was 14 years old I became obsessed with photography. It was at a time when our junior high in Olathe, Kansas was equipped with a darkroom. If you aren’t familiar with darkrooms in schools, you might not have ever stepped into one.

They stink and have a red glowing light. It was like stepping into a laboratory. Little stations were side by side and in the center was a large sink with water ever-cycling. The trickle sound rings prominent in my memory. Inside the sink held the stink. The chemical was called fixer. It was a step in the process that made an image permanent on the photographic paper. The details that make up the photography process seemed endless.

The darkroom was a place I could get lost in - not because I was escaping anything. It was a place I could get lost in because it held my interest and I marveled over what I was able to do in that amber glowing room. 

There were so many steps to get into the darkroom in the first place. And I was equally thrilled to learn those complicated instructions too. Different cameras used different sized film. My first teacher introduced me to film and all its shapes and forms. I distinctly remember creating a pinhole camera out of an oatmeal box. We didn’t eat oatmeal at home so I had to ask my friends and neighbors to save me their empty round cardboard package of oatmeal.

The pinhole experiment stuck with me to this day. The very idea that dreamy images could be created by placing a piece of film opposite of a pinhole in an oatmeal package - still blows my mind. 

Later, I moved to Euless, Texas where the high school I was attending did not have a darkroom. Or rather, they did have a darkroom - in a closet. Essentially it was the storage of the remaining equipment from the photography classes they had phased out of the curriculum. 

At 16 years old, I made an appointment with the high school principal and managed to get permission to leave the high school daily to go to the junior college and take photography classes. The Tarrant County Junior College had a state of the art photography department led by Peter Fereston. You can see his work in the Smithsonian archives and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Peter agreed to take me into his lectures and oversee my education in photography. He stuck me with a camera that was almost too big for me to carry. The film wasn’t on rolls like you see in a canister. No, for this camera you had to use sheet film. But the film was so sensitive to light you had to load the film-holders in complete darkness.   

The steps to take one picture meant setting up the large camera on adjustable legs. You had to measure the light and adjust the camera's settings in order to take a picture. After taking one picture, you had to flip the film-holder to take a second. Carrying multiple film-holders alone was cumbersome. My tiny teenage body had to lug that very large camera around while all the college-aged kids were given a hand-held standard sized camera. We all had the same assignments, only mine were required to be completed using a 4 X 5 camera. 

Peter was a gift. The challenge meant I would often be in the dark or in the darkroom and always on a visual quest to get the picture I needed - on one sheet of very sensitive film. It was the ultimate puzzle of light, composition, and chemicals.

There are people in our lives we credit for shaping our interests and helping us discover our gifts. It’s much easier to identify who they are in retrospect. Peter Feresten forced me to slow down and think deeply about the process with each assignment. He chose that large format camera for me because he knew I would have to slow down to discover the best solutions. 

The chemical process of photography may have lost its relevance in today’s society, but the resulting image is a vital part of communication; Quite possibly the most powerful communication tool in the world. 

The evolution of photography reminds me of the cycle of life. We could haphazardly take as many “pictures” as possible and hope to get a good shot at having a good life - Or we could slow down and bask in the process of making it the best we can in one shot.