Darkroom Manipulation

When I was doing my first darkroom prints for my self-portraits, Maddy was telling me how editing was done in the darkroom before digital processes existed. Now that I'm going to reprint my photos from film instead of doing contact prints, I won't be able to edit the images on Photoshop without altering the quality of the film, so I want to learn how to achieve the same look with traditional techniques.

I watched this video to learn about how photo editing techniques were done in the darkroom, and here are my notes:

- tape down the paper so it can't move during dodging, burning, and masking.

- develop different areas for different lengths of time using a paintbrush and developer

- dodge areas with paper on wire

- burn areas with hands, close to the enlarger light

- make a burning mask by putting a piece of paper/card above the baseboard, enlarging the image onto it, tracing the area you want to make the mask of, and then cutting it out. It can then be hovered above the image when it's being enlarged

- feather the edge of the mask by jiggling it