The long journey from photographing to photographic paper, when I was young...

It's been a while. I love black and white images because I started photography when I had no other option but black and white. Fortunately. I am glad I had this opportunity to do and understand photography. Taking a black-and-white photograph in 1970 meant doing everything yourself.
Not doing everything yourself, as you do now, when you choose something to photograph, frame it with your camera or cell phone, and press the shutter button. No!.

For a black and white photograph in the last century, you had to buy photographic film to insert into the camera. There was nothing automated about taking a photo; you had to manually choose the focal length, sharpness, exposure time, and aperture. After taking all the images (usually 36), you had to pull the film into its sealed box so that no light would reach the film.

Then you had to have a small photo lab where you could prepare the developing chemicals from chemical salts, create darkness so you could take the film out of the box and develop it, keeping the photographic film in the substances for a specific number of minutes. If you were lucky enough not to make any mistakes, you would obtain the negatives of the images photographed.

The next step was to transfer the image from the film onto specially treated and light-sensitive photographic paper. It was not possible to work under normal lighting conditions; you had to have red light in the laboratory, which did not affect the photographic paper.

With the help of a device called an enlarger, I think... I don't remember very well, the image on the photographic film was projected onto photographic paper, enlarging the image by changing the distance between the lens of the enlarger and the paper.

Once the photographic paper was exposed, it was immersed in two substances that fixed the image and determined its brightness. The longer the paper was kept in the substances, the darker the image became. This process often resulted in ruined photographs, with images that were either underexposed or overexposed.

To take good, accurate photos, you need a lot of experience, gained after many attempts and many ruined photos.

This process, from taking the photo to holding it in my hands, took a long time, many hours of intense work... and a lot of money, as all the necessary ingredients were quite expensive...

Today, now that we are already past the first quarter of this century, the time between taking a photo and being able to see it is no longer than a few seconds. The need for photographic film no longer limits us; with a few dozen images on a roll, we can now take hundreds or thousands of photos in no time at all. We can edit the photos as we wish and correct any exposure errors even after we have taken the pictures.

The cost has been reduced to the cost of the camera or mobile phone.

When I want to take black and white photos, it's now very easy. I take color photos with my camera or cell phone, and then I convert them to black and white using one of the many apps that offer this feature.

The photos illustrating this post were taken in the place where I was born and lived for the first seven years of my life, in the 1960s. I like to use black and white when referring to the more distant past.

_{This is my entry for the #monomad challenge.}

_{I rely mostly on photos in all my blogs. Words don't help me as much as photos.}

_{I always start with photos when I want to write a blog. Photos remind me of places, events, and feelings that turn into words. The words have even less importance; they are a companion to the photos I want to show. This often makes the story uninteresting or common, yet it is necessary; otherwise, the photos would merely be a series of unexciting images.}

_{I make this statement as a plea to those reading not to overjudge the text and to focus on the photos. The story puts everything in context and provides the explanations and clarifications necessary for the blog to convey something of interest to the reader.}

_{A wise saying goes that a photograph is worth a thousand words, but I'm not sure. In my opinion, it depends on the viewer.}