Staring At The Sun

Or: Weird stuff you can do in a darkroom

San Francisco, solarized

We might live in a time of megapixels and microprocessors but there are still some effects you can do in a darkroom that are almost impossible in Photoshop. Case in point: Solarization. Photographers have known how to create these surreal, partially-inverted images since the days of Daguerre in the mid-1800s, but it didn’t make its way into fine art photography until Man Ray popularized the technique in the 1920s.

Photoshop and other image editors are able to algorithmically solarize an image, but they can’t match the bizarre, cloudy, dark landscapes that are created from recreating the process in the darkroom. Photoshop solarization looks almost comically artificial; darkroom solarization looks anything but.

That said, it’s not exactly easy to get right.

This weekend, I spent a few hours in a rental darkroom in Berkeley. I decided to experiment a bit with solarization, and found the perfect picture to try. A few years ago, I snapped a photo of Marco Cochrane’s “Bliss Dance” on my Hasselblad while on Treasure Island, near sunset. With the city and sun behind this massive sculpture of criss-crossed metal, it was the ideal scene for some dramatic experimentation.

Scan of the original image, complete with little Hasselblad Vs on the right side of the frame

The first few attempts to get a solarized print were abject failures (note: never try to solarize an image with a cell phone camera flashlight, it just doesn’t work). I was about to give up when I found a technique that worked almost perfectly. Seeing the solarized image bloom under red safelight after I had finally figured out how to fit it all together was almost magical.

Here’s how I was able to make it happen:

First, print a photo under the enlarger like you would any other. Make a test strip. Print a normal print. Develop, stop, fix. Everything just as you’d do if you didn’t intend to solarize the photo. Take it out of the darkroom and look at it under incandescent light or sunlight to make sure you got the exposure spot-on.

Once you’re satisfied with your print, the fun begins.

If you’re in a darkroom with multiple enlargers, this next step is much easier. Take a separate enlarger and put it at the highest height setting. Crank it up as tall as it’ll go. Put in a few filters (I stacked a #4, #4 1/2, and a #5). You want a fairly dim light here, so the dimmer you can make it, the better. If you don’t have another enlarger, take a low-wattage light bulb (maybe 20 watts, max) and place it about 3–4 feet from a flat surface.

Next, make the print you made in step one again. But, after you place it into the developer, take it out right as the image starts to bloom. Usually, this will take about 20 or 25 seconds. Place it in the stop for a few seconds, then put it in a tray. Take it over to the enlarger or lightbulb and expose it for a second or two. Keep your exposure times small, too much and you’ll just end up with a black page.

One you’ve done that, place it back into the developer and let it sit for a minute and a half. At this point, you can treat it like a standard print. After around 45 seconds, the solarized image will start to form on the paper, and you’ll see dark clouds, bright outlines of objects, and all the typical characteristics that accompany solarization.

Once it’s fully developed, stop and fix like you would any other print.

There’s more here to experiment with too. Standard dodging and burning techniques could work for solarization, given longer exposure times. The patterns of clouds created on the image might be able to be manipulated too. I’m sure there’ll more to add to this article as I play more with it in the darkroom.

Solarization may be an old technique, but it’s incredibly dramatic. And for the most part, it’s entirely the realm of analog photography. If you end up spending time in a darkroom, and you’re looking for something fun to try outside of the standard printing process, give solarization a shot, and you might be surprised with the results.