Dodging and Burning

Last week I wrote about how I converted the bathroom into a darkroom when I was a teenager. The ability to produce photographs is now so much easier. I wrote about how you needed to work amongst other things in a dim red light, you needed plenty of running water to wash the chemicals off the prints, and before you could do anything you had to set up the room.

You started with a white piece of paper and the more light that fell on the paper the darker it went. So the dark parts of the negative in the enlarger caused the corresponding area on the paper to be lighter, hence the word negative. You could make an area of the picture a little lighter by hovering a piece of card over the paper. This technique was called dodging. The opposite technique is called burning. If it helps you remember then think of the light from the enlarger falling onto the paper and it continues fall and eventually causes a fire. Light from the enlarger causes the print to be darker. So burning is making an area of the print darker and dodging is making an area of the print lighter.

These techniques have been described to me like brass rubbing. I have never been brass rubbing but I have moved a pencil backwards and forwards on a piece of paper and there has been a coin underneath. This is what I think of when I do my dodging and burning. Both techniques are so much easier than waving cardboard around. If you wanted to change the brightness of the whole print then it wouldn't be called dodging and burning but simply changing the brightness.

Happy snapping