by Tae Kim
Design Director

We’re living in the whole new era of digital age. 20 years, even 10 years ago, the world was totally different as it is now.

How about photography? Digital CCD and CMOS have taken the place of film. The process of developing and printing an image has handed the baton to the computer.

At SCC, we have a great darkroom facility. It’s open to students who take photography classes. When my Black and White Photography class started this quarter, I stepped into the darkroom. It reminded me of the time I first entered a darkroom. It was about seven years ago, as I remember. At that time, the darkroom was a notorious place of romance. How was it possible?

As the word says, a darkroom is nothing but a “dark” room. Hmm… What do you think? The first step is to develop the film with chemicals. The next step is to print the image. During the printing process, a small dim red light illuminates the room. But before the print is made, the film should be rolled without any light.

So the romance usually started when a second year student taught a new student how to roll film in absolute darkness. Can touching each others’ hands trigger a romance? Well, at that time, it did.

Now, we have computer software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, which does the same job we have previously done in the darkroom, but even more delicately and powerfully. It seems that the process has become a lot easier, and darkroom romance has been nearly eliminated.

Unfortunately, companies like Kodak announced they won’t put any more effort into producing better films or chemicals and eventually they wont produce any film at all. SCC stopped running the color photo lab last summer because of supply problems with color photo chemicals.

It seems that everything moves to digital so quickly. CDs already took the place of vinyls, and DVDs have done the same with videotapes.

Who knows? In the near future, we may miss the taste and smell of real foods because of the pills substituting meals, or we may miss physical intimacy due to cybersex.