Q: Why is this site called
'Darkroom without Shadows'?
A: It's a low key joke about my circumstances. Poverty has kept me from being able to afford a darkroom of my
own, leaving me dependent on the usually unsatisfactory developing done in Osco and other places where the hoi polloi
(that would be me) can afford to bring their film. One can get angry about such experiences, and do nothing but get
angry, or one can treat them as challenges and opportunities for a little growth. I chose the latter.
I ran the photos through Adobe, and contrary to what you might have heard about those magical filters that will make
up for all deficiencies in the film development process, all was not well. So, I worked some more, tweaked some more,
and found that what I had eventually didn't look entirely like a photography, any more. Embracing that, I tweaked, pushed,
dragged color around the screen, and eventually found that the butchery of my photos in the lab had left me with a
new canvas on which to paint. Are these photographs? No, a photo is a record of what we've seen, and between the
liquification, the movement of detail around the screen, the filtering upon filtering, what we're left with is more
fiction than fact. But what we're seeing aren't exactly prints, either, because they started out life as photos, some
of the lines you see being the ones nature provided, others being purely artificial. "Photomanipulation", perhaps?
Six small and admittedly humble pieces to begin, with more to come, as always. The icons you see on the display pages are
free downloads from iconeasy.com. Yes, they're a little too brightly colored to fit in with the page at the moment. I'll
see if I can modify them a little, as needed.
You might notice that one of the icons on each page links to a copy of the image,
usually one on my space at DeviantArt, the link
opening up in a new window in each case. If you go over there, even if you do close this window - which you
shouldn't - you can still easily find your way back to the ring. When you see "~josephdunphy", just click on
that and you'll end up on the main page for my space there, where you'll find links back to home and to your ring.
On Flickr, links to "home" and "return to your ring" are currently present on every image in my photostream,
with links to home and the rings being present on my personal groups and profiles as well, so finding your way
back should, again, should be easy.