chance not choice

[archer]

With all the various threads regarding the different films and developers one should use or limit themselves to for consistency sake, the necessity to respond to serendipity, is seldom mentioned. How many of you have arrived at that accidental, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the wrong film loaded and no chance to use the right film for that subject or even with the right film loaded, knowing that your normal developer and processing technique will be inadequate for what you pray you've captured? A case in point..Moonrise Hernandez New Mexico. If Ansel Adams had rushed back to his darkroom and souped his film in DK50 or whatever, just because that was what he normally used, how different would that iconic image be? In the early stages of learning this craft, the use of one film and developer combo exclusively until one can understand the limits this imposes, is an absolute necessity if one wants to progress beyond the beginner stage but I think that sometimes, those of us who have been at this a very long time and have achieved a modicum of success, forget how much experimenting we did to get here. Sorry for the sermon but I was just reminded by a former student that I too was guilty of discouraging his experimenting years ago even after I was given the advice by Ansel Adams, about which I just sermonized, when I was just starting out. How soon we forget.
Denise Libby