Madison Film Photographer & Educator Steve Daubs
Fine Art Photographer Steve Daubs
I have been a photographer across many genres for more than 40 years, returning recently to my roots in black and white film/analog photography. My focus has always been on capturing the imperfect, real beauty in the world, and after decades of technological progress in photography, I found that for me, the challenges of traditional film and darkroom printing bring out my best work.
It is both simpler and more complex: Just film, shutter, and aperture, with no looking back once you expose a frame. Then, in the darkroom, a meditative place, shrouded in the dim glow of a safelight, another kind of magic happens as negatives become art. And the resulting final print, made after time passes to give me the distance required to understand how an image works without the feelings I had while making it, is the secret sauce to better work.
I am available for film commissions, one-on-one tutoring in the craft of analog photography, and I also offer individual and group lessons in my well-equipped darkroom.
It was a commercial that put me over the edge and back to the world of film. The ad, for the Google Pixel 9, showed how a user could manipulate an image in such a way that the resulting image never happened or even came close to being some kind of representation of reality.
The saddest thing to me is that I know how photographs shape our memory, and these kinds of manipulations are creating a memory that didn’t happen. AI imagery creates a portrait that doesn’t reflect you.
Any photograph can can tell the truth or create a lie. But the emergence of advanced photo editing tools in the past 20 years, combined with the emergence of AI-based digital imagery, has made intentional falsehoods so common that we simply don’t trust any image to represent some kind of truth.
So film, honestly rendered, shows reality with its imperfections and natural beauty intact. That fits my definition of something worth creating.
Why Use Film & Dakroom Printing?
The Basement Darkroom Society: Film Photography and Darkroom Classes
I’ve built four darkrooms: The first, like so many other people’s darkrooms, was in an apartment bathroom, the kind where you wash your prints in the bathtub and have to straddle the toilet when you make an exposure; The second, third, and current were all in the basement. So when it came time to open up the new darkroom and share my love of analog photography, I thought it was only appropriate the call it the Basement Darkroom Society. Whether you’re just curious about developing your own negatives, dreaming of a darkroom in your home, or looking to advance your printing skills, the society is here for you.
This darkroom was custom-built so that I could teach the skills I’ve acquired over the past 40 years of darkroom work as well as learn from others who have experience I don’t. I am available for private tutoring and am starting to roll out a series of courses to help you experience the joys (and sometimes the frustrations) of your time in the dark.
Check out the dedicated Basement Darkroom Society page for more info, or feel free to write me a message.