Back in the day

Interesting story behind this picture. I can't remember if I've told it on here before, so here we go.

The picture was shot and then developed with a few other rolls of film at UW Madison's student access darkroom. I didn't really understand the process of developing film as well as I do now, and couldn't figure out why the negatives were opaque and impossible to print. There was a hint of the image on them, but they just weren't transparent.

After working in a darkroom for a year or so I remembered that I had never thrown my negatives away, and dug them out. The fixer solution in Madison had been bad, so I just dumped the negatives into a jug, poured in fixer, and stirred them with a spoon. The fixer gets rid of all the silver on the negative that hasn't been turned black by the developer, allowing light to shine through those areas. This also gave me an anecdote to relate to students when they were really worried about getting their film into the fix quick. Extreme haste is not necessary.

Aren't baby Ben and Neil cute?