Corner 62

I’m in a dark room…no giggling…the kind of dark room where magic happened before my eyes. There is a seemingly normal piece of white paper, held in place by an easel placed below a light source, with a negative black and white image being projected upon it. In my hand there is a simplistic piece of plastic with variable sized holes. As I turned on said light source, and hold that simple device with openings, I would count the seconds by saying silently, ‘one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…and so on. It was called ‘burning’ (as opposed to dodging), a technique to add more light to a selective area of the image, in order to darken that area in the final result about to be developed. I don’t know what clever person put this crude label on a button mounted on the top of a toilet tank, but when I saw it…boom…I knew exactly what to do and how long to do it. Cue sound of running water.