OSHA Darkroom Visits

OSHA has been on campus most of this spring semester. I was first alerted to their presence a few months ago when I heard someone trying to get into my office / the darkroom between classes when I had my door closed and was eating lunch. I had 2 women talk to me about the different chemisty we use down there along with training I had (or didn't have). Lots of questions. I sprinted down the hall to my afternoon class showing up about 30 seconds late, and I don't know if they fully bought my line of "OSHA showed up unexpectedly and I was talking to them about what goes on in the darkroom!"

In the following few days, I had a few calls from them as well: they wanted me to clarify a few things, but it was nothing egregious. Mostly about the respirator I had for disposing of some chemisty that I "inherited" when I started teaching at Concordia a few years back - like if I was "fit" for it, medically cleared to wear it, and if I was required to wear it or if it was just "at will." (Not fit, not medically cleared, but just used "at will" which made those issues less problematic.)

Then a 3rd person from OSHA wanted to meet with me in the darkroom a few weeks after that. I thought it was a quick "clarifing" meeting like the last 2 phone calls, but it was an all-out meeting that took my entire lunch time between classes. He was excited to be in a darkroom for the first time as he said "now I can tell my kids I've been in one of those 'orange rooms' like you see in movies and on TV!"

And then he called back 2 times as well, with more questions. His big concerns were with one thing that we used in the darkroom: the PhotoFlo or Wetting Agent. He had no concerns with the students using / touching / breathing in this chemisty, but his concerns were with the few seconds it takes me to mix a batch. It contains less than 5% formaldehyde, and that was concerning to him - again, only while at FULL STRENGTH as I'm mixing it as the students use it at a 1:99 dilution, and only as the last step of processing film (something that only happens a few times all semester). His concerns were like "How long does it take to you mix this? And it's just 2 times/semester? So just 4 times/year? And do you mix it by your face? Is there ever concerns about getting splash-back on your face?" (The answers were 40-60 seconds, yes, yes, no, and no.)

So then Concordia was cited with not having done proper training for me in the darkroom, and that we only had digital copies of the MSDS and not printed copies. (And there were other departments that didn't have MSDS handy, so that was an issue in other spots around campus as well.)

Long story short, I have MSDS printed and outside of the darkroom, and I had to take 4 online "courses" to make sure I know how to be safe with the chemicals in the darkroom.

I now have these 4 super fancy certficates to my name: "Intro to OSHA" (that needed to be a course?), "Material Handling Safety," "Personal Protective Equipment Awareness," and "Respiratory Protection:"

And now the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) - now commonly known as Safety Data Sheets (SDS) - are just outside the darkroom:

Bound and tabbed.

The solution to the formaldehyde in the Sprint brand PhotoFlo was to simply get rid of it. So the last batch of mixed PhotoFlo is currently being used, and then we'll have no more. I easily found a Kodak version ("Kodak Photo-Flo 200 Solution") that does the same thing (helps keep water spots from forming when the negatives are drying) that does NOT contain formaldehyde. I'll be purchasing that for the fall semester.

Likewise, the solution for me having a respirator that I wasn't fit for or medically cleared to wear was also to just make it go away. It's not something I need for any of my day-to-day work in the darkroom - it was purchased for me only because I requested it when I was disposing of a lot of "spent," unlabeled chemisty that had been saved in the back corner of the darkroom when I started teaching at Concordia. We went through Safety-Kleen to get a hazardous waste drum and I dumped it all in there a few years ago.

OSHA's happy, and I'm happy. :)

Film Processing: All Successes with One Strange Failure!

We had a 100% success rate in processing film in my Photo I class earlier this week:

Washed tanks after processing.


Film drying!

But one strange thing happened. Most of our white reels have the small "teeth" which are tricky to load. I have 2 reels from my personal stash that I brought in years ago that have the big "teeth" that are easier to load (and easier to keep the film from jumping off the reel as you're loading). One of my students was trying some practice film with one of my reels, and suddenly, it stopped pulling up the film. We noticed the little ball bearing had fallen out. I gave him a standard "smaller tooth" reel, and we kept working.

After they were done processing, I notice what had happened... Normally, the side of the reel looks like this, with a little white "cap" holding in the ball bearing:

But the white cap had fallen off on the other side:

Luckily, I was able to find the cap...

... but not the ball bearing. I might harvest a ball bearing from a different reel and see if I can super glue the cap back on. We'll see if that MacGyver fix will work!

First B&W Prints from Photo I

Here are a few prints from the start of last semester's Photo I class at Concordia University. We had just finished "The Photographer's Eye" by John Szarkowski, and students worked to make photos in the 5 ways he wrote about in that essay. It was every student's first time working with a 35mm camera and printing photographs in a traditional darkroom.

[click each image for a larger view]

Ella: detail


CeeDee: detail


Raina: vantage point


Grace: detail


Emily: vantage point


Megan: the thing itself


Natalie: detail

Photograms from Concordia

Here are a few scans of some of my students' photogram projects. Many of these were considered "self-portraits:"

Natalie


Betty


Raina


Terra


Megan


Seojin


Emily


Natalie


Sky

You can see more projects like this in this post from 3 years ago, and this post from 2 years ago.

Successful Student Film Processing!

We had a great few days in the darkroom recently. Over 2 days, we had a 100% success rate with 11 rolls processed!

A lot of tanks drying.


The final 2 rolls being washed.


11 rolls drying until next class!

PhotoFlo and Busted Film

Last week, half of my Photo II / Advanced Photo class processed film. One of my students was doing it for the first time. And everyone's film turned out!

I mixed a fresh batch of PhotoFlo, and I love/hate how it's so "soapy" that the printing has been rubbing off the bottle:

Sorry for the quick and out-of-focus pic... trying to get it before my students came back in.


Text smearing off the bottle.


Rinsed tanks and reels after successful processing!

Oh, and I had a "first" in the Concordia darkroom - this has happened before, but the last I recall it happening was back in my CVA days over a decade ago.

A student used a fully manual 35mm camera for the first time (Canon AE-1), whereas in the past, she had a newer / more automatic 35mm camera (like a Canon Rebel 2000). She was unsure how to start rewinding it, so we did it together. Only I IMMEDIATELY felt no resistance while rewinding - there was no film being rewound. Usually, that means the film was never fully loaded and it just "sat there" not being fed through the camera. But I didn't believe that happened in this situation, because we loaded the film together the week before, and we noted that the rewind knob was turning as we advanced the film, so the film appeared to be loaded properly and moving through the camera.

I asked if she really tried to force the advance lever when she was near the end of the film, and she wasn't sure. I HOPED that she just tore the film off the spool as she finished shooting the roll. So we waited to open the camera until the lights were off and everyone else was loading their film onto reels. SURE ENOUGH, she had just muscled her film right off her film spool! I cut it clean and handed her the film in the dark and had her load it up for processing. When we turned the lights back on, we saw how it tore off a few inches from the spool:

Quite the way it tore! (Scissors just holding the film flat.)

I figured it would have pulled off from where it was mechanically attached to the spool, and not just randomly near the end. But irregardless, her film ended up turning out, and she was super happy that I predicted what had happened before she just opened the back of her camera in the light and ruined her film. It was a good day in the darkroom!

End-of-Semester Views in the Art Building at the University of Minnesota

My "fill in" position in the Art Department at the University of Minnesota is over. It was great being back there where I taught 1-2 classes every semester from 2005 through 2011. Here were some views as I was there to return student work in late December:

[click each image to enlarge]

The classroom where we spent the last half of the semester.


The darkroom sink at the U of M.








Outside the darkroom, with the film processing area in the background.


Aperture examples above the entrance to the darkroom.


Drying racks.








Down the hall in the DSB (Digital Service Bureau).


I honestly love working in here.






Large roll printers in the back corner.


View from the back corner.


I've never asked for the backstory regarding these palm trees. But they've been there for years.

Oh, and I had a student turn in some final prints in a manilla envelope, and it's pretty clear that they forgot my last name:

Ha! Here's to a good spring semester!