Like workin on old school cameras and with the liquid dunk.
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In analogue photography, you start out by exposing a light-sensitive image to light in order to record an image. This could be a glass or metal plate covered in a light-sensitive emulsion, a negative covered in light-sensitive chemicals etc.
The camera really does nothing more than quickly open and close an opening that allows light to come in through the lens and fall on this light-sensitive plate. Modern camera’s do the same thing by allowing light to fall onto a light-sensitive sensor.
But after the camera is opened and closed, the plate itself is still light-sensitive. That’s why we have to develop it to permanently fix the image.
This has to be done in the dark, that’s why you usually see dark rooms in shows. If it weren’t dark, you’d be exposing the plate to light again. Red light is very low energy so sometimes a gentle red light can be used.
For most common photography methods, the development process happens in three stages. Each stage uses a bath for the photographic plate.
* The developer stage transforms the latent (invisible) recorded image into a visible recorded image through a chemical reaction with the developer liquid. The film is still light-sensitive at this stage. If you time the bath too short or too long, the image will be under or over exposed.
* The second stage is just a stop bath. This is a chemical (or sometimes just water) that stops the developer liquid from doing its work. Essentially it stops the development reaction.
* The third stage is a fixative. It stops the film from being light-sensitive so now it is safe to look at in the light. Usually, you give the picture a good wash in water after this as well to rinse off any remaining chemicals.
And usually you do this process twice. The camera makes a negative film (dark is light and light is dark). So you develop the negative.
And then you take a piece of photographic paper that is light sensitive just like the negative in the camera. You shine a light through the negative to create a positive photographic recording on the paper. And then you develop the paper just like the negative. So developer, stop bath, fixer again.
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