The Dying Art of the Darkroom: a very poignant video portrait of rare, mystical, magical places. Digital photographers don't know what they missed.

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Part inner-sanctum, part personal space, part scientific experimentation lab and part man-cave (or woman-cave).

The darkroom was where the second part of the process would occur. Mostly in the dark... or with a dull red bulb giving only enough light to barely make out the tools and processors we used.

My darkroom is packed up and sitting on the side of my garage. Two enlargers, 5 lenses (damned expensive Nikkors and Schneiders), Cibachrome processing tubes, dryers, film tanks and more.

Maybe someday I say to myself when I glance at that little stack of boxes... maybe someday.

But that day may never come, and I realize that. And I keep the boxes anyway.

My wife doesn't prod me to give them away, or donate them or whatever. She knows that some things are meant to be kept... for reasons other than the rational.

Digital photography is wonderful. And I have fully embraced it (as my three licensed copies of Photoshop will attest to).

And yet I miss the silence, and the chemistry, and the ability to screw up so prevalent in every darkroom adventure.

Holding a print that looks like you thought it would when you clicked the shutter... after processing it in chemistry, printing it with an enlarger and dodging and burning and bleaching and toning and drying...

Yeah... watching one spit out the front of the Epson is not the same. It just isn't.

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