DARK ROOM

Stepping out of the revolving door you enter a room filled with nothing but darkness. The smell is strong but oddly familiar. The noise is loud but strangely pleasant. Behind the wall that separates you, and where you are, from the rest of the world is a place filled with terror, evil, pressure, and unwanted attention. In this room, everything stops and disappears. There’s no clock, no time, and no pressure. It’s just you, the film, and the developer. Nobody is there forcing you or pressuring you to do or expose anything you don’t want to. You decide...you call the shots, you make the rules. You expose what you want, how you want.

Two-seconds, Four-seconds, Six-seconds, Eight-seconds

Choose your exposure level carefully. How dark or light do you want your image to be? Black and White? Color? Sepia? You decide. Only you can make the choice. Now comes the anticipation. What have you created? Time for the developer. Pressure’s on! Not the bad kind of pressure. This is the good kind – exciting pressure. The kind that sends a rush to your head like a mental high. Time this perfectly. If you do it for too long your image will be overdeveloped and everything will be ruined. Too short, and you can’t see anything. You only have 90 seconds to get this right.

On Your Mark…Get Set…Go!


The thrill is amazing. All the choices you made slowly creep onto the paper. It’s so cool…so strange…so confusing…so…quick! Ninety seconds is up! Take out your image. You can’t just stop now! You have to continue and move onto the next step. Thirty seconds to stop the developing process. STOP BATH! Whatever you don’t want to happen to your image has to be changed now. This is the main point of control and everything stops here. Thirty seconds have come and gone. Ready for what’s next? Time for five minutes of long, lonely, quiet patience. You focus on the name of the step—fix.

Fix

What if there was a “fix” for actions in life like a fix in the darkroom? Everything that happens to you that you wish you could wash off and just like that it would be fixed. What if the poor decisions you’ve made, due to social and self-pressure, could all go away with a “fix” bath?

STOP DAYDREAMING!

You’re five minutes is up. The “fix” is done. Your image is restored. Whatever imperfections it once had are gone now. It feels good, but be careful, if you overdo it the image is compromised. Now onto the painfully long ten minutes. Constant thought with no interruptions. Can you handle it? Go ahead. Try. See if you can. Easy? HA! Sure it’s easy to drop your image in water for ten minutes and let everything just wash off. A clean slate. Can you handle that, though? Can you let go of any painful experience or any stupid thing you did to yourself or someone else and just let it wash away forever? If you want to, you now know what to do.

P.S. Don’t forget to turn off the lights...

Like a piece of photo paper, you start off blank. As life goes on, you get filled, crammed, and exposed. All you have to do is develop your thoughts, think about what you did, and stop whatever else you’re doing. Just focus on what you’re thinking about and what you’re developing. Fix it. Do what you can to make it better. Wash it away. It’s all gone. You’re finished. But it’s easier said than done. However, if you don’t attempt to fix your mistakes then you would never know what could’ve happened. Take your time. And Remember…next time you’re in the darkroom, leave all your baggage outside. It’s just you and your thoughts alone in here.