My usual workflow for photos has been:

• Develop a roll
• Scan the negatives
• Do a few adjustments in Affinity Photo
• Share the good shots with folks

But as I’ve started to spend more time with those negatives in the darkroom I’ve noticed something. The prints I make are very different from the scanned negative.

Here’s a recent negative:

It’s nice enough. But when I followed my normal process for making a split-grade print in the darkroom I got this.

It’s a touch too dark. I’ve been trying to refine the shadows over subsequent prints. But the thing that jumps out to me even in this draft version of a print are the richness of the tones and the shimmering nature of the highlights on the petals. It’s a very different interpretation of the same negative.

Another example

And the print

The print is moodier, and I find it more dynamic. The separation between the shadowed and sunny parts of the tree is more delineated. And the shadows under the roots are weightier.

I don’t doubt that I could use a photo editor and make my scanned negatives look more like my prints. But that requires a lot of time, both to learn the tool and then to tweak my negatives. And time is not something I have a lot of. And I don’t get a lot of enjoyment sitting at my laptop and tweaking filters, so why would I spend my limited time doing something I don’t really enjoy?

But I do enjoy my time in the darkroom, learning those tools and seeing the results. So if I’m going to spend time anywhere, it’s there.

I’m happy with that choice, but it also introduces a dilemma. If I want to share a film photo with someone do I wait until I’ve made a print that I’m happy with? If so I’ll probably only be able to share a few photos a month. Darkroom time is hard to come by in my life and a good print takes time.

What I think I’m going to do is share some scanned negatives but with a clear caption specifying that they are rough draft scans. And then, if I’m able to make a good print, share that as the “final” version.