This post is part of a series. To get the full story, read Darkroom - Parts 1 & 2.
After graduating from high school, I attended Emory & Henry College near Abingdon, VA. I used two darkrooms while at E&H. One was in the basement of the fine art building - Beyers Hall. This darkroom was maintained by the art department. There was little heat in the basement of Beyers Hall and the winters I was at E&H were very cold. The temperature in the darkroom would be in the fifties sometimes when I would work in it. I spent many a night working in the darkroom there.
I took a photography class through the art department at E&H. The instructor was Dr. Alfredo Castellanos. I was self-taught in the darkroom and he helped me refine my technique. The E&H darkroom was outfitted with stainless steel film processing tanks, whereas I had been using plastic tanks at home. As the year progressed from Fall into Winter, the film I developed started looking underexposed. Dr. Castellanos looked at it and diagnosed the problem immediately. He explained that since the darkroom was so cold, the developer was cooling off during the development of the film, causing it to be underdeveloped - which looked similar to it being underexposed. Film is processed at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. If the recommended time at 68 degrees is 10 minutes, it would be longer at, say, 65 degrees - maybe 11 minutes. I was developing film at the recommended time for 68 degrees, but by the time the development period was over, the developer might have dropped to, say, 62 degrees. This was exacerbated by using stainless steel tanks. Steel conducts heat faster than plastic - so the “heat” in the tank was being conducting into the colder room temperature. To combat this effect, I learned to warm the tank with my hands as the film was being processed.
The other darkroom I used at E&H was the publications darkroom. It was maintained by the yearbook, the newspaper, and the literary magazine. It was in the basement (yes, another basement) of the Student Activities Center (SAC). The SAC was interesting place. It was the old athletic building. When I was at E&H it was the building used for dances and it also served as a dorm. The darkroom was at the end of the dorm hall. None of the dorms at E&H were co-ed at the time. None of the rooms had showers - there was a common shower room on the hall. Women were supposed to shout, “Woman on the hall” when they went to the darkroom. Some didn’t know to do it or forgot, so it made for interesting situations.
I used these two darkrooms during the school year, and then returned to the darkroom at my parents’ home in the Summer.