date » 20-11-2025 10:55
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tags » diana plastic camera, photography, blak and white, developing film, home darkroom, roll 120 format,
A local market stall where you can findany useful things for everyday needs and even a camera, yes exactly, like a meteorite falling from outer space. The cost, but was prohibitive at the time, however by to a crowdfunding ante litteram among relatives, I managed to get it and, who would have imagined, it gave my a new and different way of “photographing” the around horizon (urban life and much more). In the beginning, I took the square 6x6 film, Diana camera, to one of the many photo shops long the Main street my Town, which after a few days would return in 10x15 prints, which I didn't like much, as they were far removed from what I saw during the click. And so, with the help of an uncle who was a photographer, I tried to carry out the entire process from shooting to final photographic tiny cardboard : but how to do it? I read it long ago of those American comic strips about certain "detective" who took photographs, and in a darkroom, illuminated by the glow of red lamp so carry out an investigations. And so after buying the chemicals from the photographic store long the Main Street, taking advantage of the fact that there was not a soul at home, I unrolled the film, removing it from the typical 120 format paper support, and placed the first chemical bath in the soup tureen that was on the table but which, for the occasion, I used as a basin, as recommended by my photographer uncle, under light red lamp. Bad e wrong idea (!) in fact : before I even had time to immerse the film in the soup tureen-basin, the blackness turned the film as black as midnight. I was upset about it, blaming the fact that, at that moment, my mother had arrived and in the other room turned on the evening light. And from that initial disaster, slowly, after more than fifty years, again, I remember the disappointment of that moment.
