Between work and class, I pause to share these thoughts

I have an Africa map quiz tomorrow I should be studying for. A map quiz! I thought I passed 5th grade the first time around. 

Also I made my first print in this photo class yesterday- It was like the most awesome thing ever. I have to say that at first, I was really uncomfortable with the class- even convinced myself to be miserable about it because it's completely new ground to cover and I'm really bad at being excited about change. I've never learned about photography before.  So to go into this beginning photo class without even a camera was confusing enough (what's wrong with my camera phone?), and then make me develop my own black and white prints? I might as well be on Mars. Processing that first roll of film was so frustrating. It was the same frustration you get when you look at a still-life with fake flowers in glass bottles and bowling pins leaning on teddy bears and realize you have to draw that s#!+ for a grade.

I hated the camera store for charging me 150 bucks on film and the syllabus for being serious and intimidating and the dark room for being dark.  6 weeks of this madness while I could just as easily snap a pic on my way to work and put that s#!4 on Instagram.  What did I get myself into?   

Then yesterday happened and we got to the hands-on part of it all- the part of these classes that made me fall for the studio in the first place.  So I get in there with my film and do everything I think right, and take my print outside to check it out. And there it was. My first print! It was exhilarating, like seeing a painting come together. And rewarding, like getting everything right on a map quiz.  I wanted to parade it around town and show everyone what I'd done and isn't it great? Just look at that fine grain detail! 

Showing it to my professor (the Australian) brought on it's own list of mmm-no's and try-that-again's, but that wasn't the point.  The point was that I got this motivation to want to do more, learn more, mess up more, try it again and again and really attempt to master the foundations of black and white photography.  So while I expect more emotional troughs of frustration and contempt for this incredibly complicated skill, I'm also prepared to fully appreciate the darkness of the dark room and marvel at all the good photographers of the world.  Hats off to you, Ansel Adams!  

There she is, in all her resin-coated paper glory!