Photographic Dreams and Nightmares

cliveh · Oct 27, 2012

I dont often have these, but last night I dreamt I was clearing out a darkroom cupboard and I came across a bottle of liquid wrapped in a dark bag. I started carrying it down a road and I could hear the liquid sloshing about which made me thirsty, so I opened the bag, unscrewed the top and drank some. At the same time I remembered it was Potassium Dichromate. I spat it out immediately, but the horror of such an act woke me from my nightmare.
Do others ever dream such things?

BrianShaw · Oct 27, 2012

Interesting. I have flown, drown, and been buried alive in dreams but never drank poisons. For the erotic dreams I've lied and tol my wife it was her in the dream.

pdeeh · Oct 27, 2012

hmm.
cliveh - tell me about your childhood ...

lxdude · Oct 27, 2012

BrianShaw said:
For the erotic dreams I've lied and tol my wife it was her in the dream.

I had a girlfriend who had a dream that I was in a swimming pool with another woman, and put my arm around the woman and smiled up at her, the girlfriend.
For that I got the silent treatment for a full day and snippyness for nearly a week. And occasional reminders more than a year later. Note that she had the dream. Also note that she's an ex-GF.

jordanstarr · Oct 27, 2012

...I always have dreams that I've dropped my camera (in a lake, off a cliff, etc.) or my darkroom went up in flames/submersed in water or all my negatives got stolen or destroyed. It's a huge relief when I wake up in the morning. Never dreamt of drinking the chemicals though. As a vegetarian of 11+ years, I often have dreams of eating big macs and stuff like that, but that's a whole other field of psycho analysis.

summicron1 · Oct 27, 2012

mine generally involve finding a load of lovely antique cameras that I can't quite get my hands on, a la alice chasing the egg around the knitting shop.

cliveh · Oct 27, 2012

pdeeh said:
hmm.
cliveh - tell me about your childhood ...

Quite happy generally, although when I was about 13, my father took me to a camera shop to buy me a camera. I suggested a Leica, but he bought me an Agfa Super Silette. That could say something!

pdeeh · Oct 27, 2012

there may be a deep-rooted problem here.
You will need to come and see me every week for ninety minutes. It should not take more than four or five years to sort out, but my charges are quite reasonable (60 guineas an hour)

removed account4 · Oct 27, 2012

while back i had a dream i was showing someone a photograph i made and i fell into it
... and couldn't get out. it was kind of nice.

from time to time i have dreams and the following day or days are exactly as i dreamt

never drank poison though ..

cliveh · Oct 27, 2012

pdeeh said:
there may be a deep-rooted problem here.
You will need to come and see me every week for ninety minutes. It should not take more than four or five years to sort out, but my charges are quite reasonable (60 guineas an hour)

My California psychologist already has this in hand for a slightly reduced price to your suggestion.

summicron1 · Oct 27, 2012

buy a leica -- it will save you money in the long run.

lxdude · Oct 27, 2012

I once dreamed I drank developer, but it was just a cup of coffee.

Or was it orange juice?:confused:

blansky · Oct 27, 2012

cliveh said:
I dont often have these, but last night I dreamt I was clearing out a darkroom cupboard and I came across a bottle of liquid wrapped in a dark bag. I started carrying it down a road and I could hear the liquid sloshing about which made me thirsty, so I opened the bag, unscrewed the top and drank some. At the same time I remembered it was Potassium Dichromate. I spat it out immediately, but the horror of such an act woke me from my nightmare.
Do others ever dream such things?

Sounds like you need to get laid more.

Ken Nadvornick · Oct 27, 2012

blansky said:
Sounds like you need to get laid more.

When one is holding a hammer, every problem begins to look suspiciously like a nail...

Ken

tomfoo13ry · Oct 27, 2012

The other night I dreamt that I opened a 100-sheet box of paper in room light and ruined it all. It definitely beats chess or math dreams. I used to have those and not only are they ridiculously dull but they left me exhausted in the morning.

Vilk · Oct 28, 2012

hmm... about half of my waking life concerns photography and my camera is never out of sight... try thirty years of that... and in all that time, not a single dream with photography in it... maybe my photographs are my dreams

MaximusM3 · Oct 28, 2012

Potassium dichromate does look inviting I never had such dream but my good friend Paul Taylor of Renaissance Press did wake up to such nightmare. A few years back, he was having some "friends" staying overnight. He was awoken by one of them in the middle of the night saying that he drank an orange liquid from a large, ugly black jug, marked as poison, in a chemicals only refrigerator that Paul keeps in his basement. Sleepwalking? Stupid? Paul rushed him to a nearby hospital where they proceeded to pump his stomach. A few weeks later, he gets slapped with a lawsuit. Of course the guy was full of it and it turned out that he had done this before for financial gain.

Now, Clive, make sure you don't sleepwalk and hit the fridge for some cool aid

removed account4 · Oct 28, 2012

back in the days of the ( american ) prohibition, when making and consuming
alcohol was illegal john garo, the boston portrait photographer ( karsh's menotor )
used to regularly have his friends ( arthur fiedler and other big wigs )
over to his studio to party. he would always use buckets labelled fixer, developer &c
as containers with booze in them, so if they were busted by the vice-squad it would look like
photography chemicals, not hooch. he was well known as not only a portrait photographer
but as a pictorialist, brought pt/pd and gum-overs back from the dead, so whoknows
maybe he also had a bucket that read potassium dichromate in the room that he
was passing around to his friends ...

cliveh · Oct 28, 2012

MaximusM3 said:
Potassium dichromate does look inviting I never had such dream but my good friend Paul Taylor of Renaissance Press did wake up to such nightmare. A few years back, he was having some "friends" staying overnight. He was awoken by one of them in the middle of the night saying that he drank an orange liquid from a large, ugly black jug, marked as poison, in a chemicals only refrigerator that Paul keeps in his basement. Sleepwalking? Stupid? Paul rushed him to a nearby hospital where they proceeded to pump his stomach. A few weeks later, he gets slapped with a lawsuit. Of course the guy was full of it and it turned out that he had done this before for financial gain.

Now, Clive, make sure you don't sleepwalk and hit the fridge for some cool aid

Max, all my chemicals are stored in a cabinet in the darkroom and the darkroom is about 20 yards from the house in the back garden. I would never, even if labelled store photographic chemicals in the domestic fridge. Do others?

AndreasT · Oct 28, 2012

BrianShaw said:
Interesting. I have flown, drown, and been buried alive in dreams but never drank poisons. For the erotic dreams I've lied and tol my wife it was her in the dream.

Brian does your wife know you post here? If not what will you give me for not telling her?
The funny thing is a lot of these dreams have really happened with me. Girlfriend drank developer, camera bag rolling down a hill into a river with me running after it like Indiana Jones running away from the boulder.

removed account4 · Oct 28, 2012

cliveh said:
Max, all my chemicals are stored in a cabinet in the darkroom and the darkroom is about 20 yards from the house in the back garden. I would never, even if labelled store photographic chemicals in the domestic fridge. Do others?

hi clive

a few months ago there was a poster who looked forward to reusing his fixer bottles ( glass ) for
beer making ... there are people who pour their spent chemicals on their vegetable garden as well ...
so it wouldn't surprise me that there would be people who store photochems in their fridge

i think 1 in 10 is a general rule for everything, including common sense ...

Ken Nadvornick · Oct 28, 2012

cliveh said:
Max, all my chemicals are stored in a cabinet in the darkroom and the darkroom is about 20 yards from the house in the back garden. I would never, even if labelled store photographic chemicals in the domestic fridge. Do others?

Glycin powder from the Formulary in the freezer. That's the only one. Used for classic Ansco 130. Well-labeled and in the opaque black plastic bag in which it comes delivered. One could never mistake it for a frozen dinner. Freezing extends the notoriously short-lived powder's effectiveness almost indefinitely.

Ken

BrianShaw · Oct 28, 2012

AndreasT said:
Brian does your wife know you post here? If not what will you give me for not telling her?

Unfortunately (for you) that information isn't worth much.

AndreasT · Oct 28, 2012

BrianShaw said:
Unfortunately (for you) that information isn't worth much.

I had to try.

AndreasT · Oct 28, 2012

Common sense is not that common as my favourite teacher used to say.
I once made some negative developer and needed a bottle and did not have one. After looking around I found an old apple juice bottleand put the developer in there.
It was summer and warm and I wanted it to keep longer. I put it in the fridge!
The next day my girlfriend comes home and is thirsty and takes a drink.
That was about 12 years ago and she has developed into a lovely woman getting prettier from day to day.

Photographic Dreams and Nightmares

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