So, you want to learn photography?
SHORT ANSWER:
Take lots of pictures. Look at other peoples’ pictures, and try to figure out what you like or don’t like about them. With these new insights in mind, reflect upon your own photos and think about how you might make them better. Repeat until you’re satisfied or give up photography for another hobby.
RAMBLING, INDIRECT ANSWER:
I learned my way around a darkroom in high school after becoming an editor of the yearbook. A high school yearbook is just a collection of photos with captions, so it seemed that the way to make myself useful was to learn how to develop film and make prints.
I don’t remember what was on that first roll of film I developed, but I do remember the experience of it. The way it works with black-and-white film is you have a cylindrical tank with a cone and tube that acts like a light baffle, and this holds some spools onto which you thread your film. It’s daunting the first time because you have to assemble everything in the dark, but once you have it together correctly you can turn on the lights again. Then: pour in some 20°C water. Shake it around, dump out the water, and pour in your developer. Watch the time, and agigate the tank at set intervals. When the time’s up, dump out the developer and pour in the stop bath. Agigate continuously, then pour it out and pour in your fixer. Agigate again on a fixed interval while watching the time. Dump it out, then rinse. Add some photoflo.
Then open up the tank and take a look. If it all went well, that grey piece of film that went in is now several feet of ghostly little pictures. The process seems a little magical the first time you do it. I think this is because you can’t see what’s going on inside that little black tank, and also because all the steps involved make it seem like a chemistry experiment. What are all those chemicals for? What are they doing to my film? How’d all those photos suddenly appear out of a blank piece of film?
We were lucky to have an interested teacher as our yearbook supervisor. Mr. Sunday was the art teacher, and he encouraged experimentation. He had stacks of old photo magazines, and I would read through all of them, looking at photos, learning about composition, and cameras, and darkroom processes. Sometimes they would publish recipes for developers that did different things from off-the-shelf developers. Mr. Sunday had tubs of raw photo chemicals, like sodium sulfite, metol, and hydroquinone. Being in the yearbook club meant that I had as much access to the darkroom after school as I wanted, so I started experimenting with non-conventional developers, all the while learning about different films and practicing composition.
I wonder how high schools teach photography these days. A few years after I graduated from high school, I learned that they acquired a colour developing machine, which seemed amazing to me. Colour photography is entirely different from black-and-white because the tolerances during the film developing process are much tighter, to the point where it’s generally impractical to do by hand. Furthermore, there’s not much point to doing it yourself because there’s little artistic control over the developing process. With black-and-white, you can expand or contract the contrast of your film by changing the developing time. You can take any speed film and shoot as if it were a higher speed. You can alter the grain of the film by choosing different developers. These types of choices don’t exist with colour photography.
Is it necessary to learn darkroom methods in order to become a photographer? I don’t think so. Digital photography, of course, circumvents these traditional processes entirely. This doesn’t mean that the latest generation of photographers, many of who will never step into a chemical darkroom, won’t produce great photographs. In the end, the art is about the image, and whether the image was captured on a digital sensor or a chemical-coated strip of plastic ultimately isn’t a very important question.
Some people waste far too much time debating whether digital is better than film, to the point where they reduce the artform a discussion of Nyquist frequencies and MTF curves. This is a pointless deconstruction, and makes about as much sense as asking whether oil paints or watercolours resolves more lines per mm, and choosing your medium based on the answer.
That said, I think there is something tactile, alchemcal, and historical about film photography that makes it worth preserving. This has nothing to do with resolution or MTF curves. It’s about process. There’s something very satisfying about spending an afternoon in the dark, hunched over an enlarger, breathing in mild chemical fumes, getting your hands wet, and then emerging from the dark with a shiny, dripping photograph. I’m a technophile, but so far I haven’t found anything in the digital realm that produces that same kind of satifisfaction. Could I have produced the same image with the latest Canon 5D digital slr? Yes. Would it have been as much fun? Probably not.
There's one more thing I like about traditional photography: the equipment is better. Camera bodies are metal, simpler to operate, relatively indestructible, and dirt cheap on the used market. My Canon F-1 weighs a couple pounds, makes a very audible clack when the shutter fires, and the winder has a smooth but reassuringly heavy throw that reminds you that it’s a well-built piece of machinery. Philip Greenspun has written a nice ode to the Nikon F2A. 20 years from now, I doubt that people will be writing similar nostaglic pieces about the latest Canon Digital Rebel. Today, you can choose from a massive inventory of old cameras and lenses on Ebay and other sources, at a fraction of the cost of the newest digital gear.
So, if you’re starting out with photography for the first time, I recommend going with film if you can. Larger cities have clubs where you can get together with other photographers and learn from each other, and often they have shared darkroom space that you can rent out.
But, if you use digital, that’s fine too. Whatever works for you. Just get out and shoot, and have fun.