Unwanted guest in the darkroom

Argusto

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Vero Beach, FL
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There are times when guests in a darkroom are an annoyance and I do my best to print solo and for the most part I am successful in keeping out my two cats and some disagreeable people. However this morning while attempting to perfect a print that I was burning when suddenly I saw a rather large silhouette with legs and an antenna scampering across the image…evidently a large Florida water bug, lodged between the bulb and the condensers of my Omega , decided on his own initiative to dodge an area that clearly needed burning. To say I was startled would be an understatement as my first reaction was to turn on the white light, thus ruining the print…probably ruined anyway. I am glad it was an 8 X 10 print and not 16 X 20 as it would certainly have given me a heart attack had the monster image appeared before me. Tried in vain to catch the little bugger but it buried itself in a crevice somewhere. This was an affront to my printing skills. He has no business in the darkroom if he does not know how to print…either he is a complete idiot or worse a severe critic of my skills, sabotaging my efforts.

This is taking biodiversity too far when a lowly bug decides to tackle fine art photography and insert himself in in the artistic printing process. I will match my skills anytime against this upstart bug. Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, I am sure, had to deal with one or two bugs in their lifetime …now they have struck me.

I am not a bug racist…while I don’t have any that I would call friends, I have been acquainted with some wonderful l bugs in my lifetime that are courteous and stay outdoors and as long as they mind their own business , I’m OK with that. I expect we humans will be extinct long before they will be and then…only then, can they be allowed to experiment with photography and perhaps even gaining some notoriety.
 

Don_ih

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I feel your pain. I had a box elder bug crawl across an enlargement I was making a few weeks ago. They find their way into the house every spring (they seem to hibernate in cracks in the walls).

Worse than that, though, I had some mice in the house during the winter. One of them actually ate a chunk of a 35mm negative. Chewed it right out of the plastic PrintFile thing.
 

wiltw

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Consider yourself fortunate. If you were trying to make a color print with a computer controlled color head, it might have been a computer bug, and those can be hard to find to remove.
 
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DREW WILEY

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A long time ago I happened to walk into the back room of a gallery in Carmel where the retouching of AA's prints was being done. The retoucher was given prints enlarged from a famous image taken in Alaska, when a mosquito was flying around inside the bellows, and decided to rest on the surface of the sheet film exactly when the image was taken. Worst of all, it was the dark sky portion of the image; so a perfect white silhouette of the insect was created. I thought to myself, That retoucher must have the worst job in the world.
 

glbeas

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A totally different kind of printing, I had a fly land on the plate cylinder of an offset web press I was starting up and for 20 or thirty sheets I had a perfect image of the fly in ink on the paper until the fountain solution finally washed it off the plate.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Once in Japan I stupidly invited an adult student into my darkroom so that she could watch me making her print. I made the exposure and said, right, and as I turned with the paper in my hand to slip into the developer, the room light went on! She thought I had told her to turn the light on!
 

Born2Late

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Be careful with roach traps if you have dogs. My Jack Russell Terrier ate one years ago; the end result was an emergency run to the Vet's. She returned it to me as I pulled into the parking lot; she was fine but my truck upholstery not so much!
 

Sirius Glass

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Born2Late said:
Be careful with roach traps if you have dogs. My Jack Russell Terrier ate one years ago; the end result was an emergency run to the Vet's. She returned it to me as I pulled into the parking lot; she was fine but my truck upholstery not so much!
Click to expand...

You should not feed Roach Motels to dogs.
 

Kino

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In the not too distant past, an unnamed co-worker had a penchant for snacking at his workstation, which happened to be attached to a Lasergraphics 4K cinema scanner. Needless to say, a colony of ants agreed with his snack choices and we were treated to a motion picture scan with giant ants attacking a group of helpless Silent Film stars. They had found their way onto the sensor of the scanner and found it a good shortcut to said supply of snacks in the workstation. Our colleague had to fumigate the room and was counseled to snack in another place...
 
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gordrob

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I am glad that where I live there is no real threat to safety from any animal, reptile or insect. A hundred miles to the east there are rattlesnakes and black widow spiders. Fifty miles to the west there are black bears, grizzly bears and cougars. But here in the City of Calgary there is not much of anything that will hurt you. In the Province we do not have any rats. For over the last 50 years we have had a Rat Patrol whose job is to keep the rats out of the Province and they have been very successful. Working in the darkroom and having an intruder doesn't happen here. When I read threads about having a darkroom in a building separate from the house brings up a lot of issues with how well did I make the building so visitors could not get in.Raccoons have started to show up in our area in the last 10 - 15 years. We have a bigger problem with Bobcats taking up residence in backyards
 
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DREW WILEY

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Bobcats don't hang around yards in this area. Cougars sometimes do. No big deal. The wildlife people dart them with tranquilizers and relocate them. Bobcats have way more "attitude" or just plain meanness than cougars, which are shy. But my brother had a pet bobcat. Black bears are showing up in people's suburban swimming pools, escaping drought or forest fire smoke. Grizzlies have been extinct here in California for about a hundred years, though they were once abundant. And a handful of wolves have migrated back into this State. Raccoons tend to get tame, though I don't ever feed them by hand; and people with chickens hate them. Coyotes are abundant; and a family of red foxes recently took up residence in a neighbor's back yard. Skunks?- well, they advertise their presence rather effectively!
 
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gone

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The St Pete bugs have a better eye for composition.

If you're in Florida, you just have to fight the battles you can win, and the water bug is the Big Bug wherever it goes. Nothing like turning on a light and seeing one the size of the old space shuttle flying right toward your head (the primordial fear of spooky critters in our hair).

Governments spend zillions of dollars on nuclear weapons, when all we need to do is fill up about 20 B52's w/ Florida water bugs and dare our enemies to mess w/ us.
 
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DREW WILEY

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What I remember about giant water bugs in the mountain swimming holes was, if they ever mistook your toe for food and bit it, it was an awfully painful bite! Big diamondback rattlesnakes were also common around the perimeters of those pools.
 

Terrence Brennan

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Mar 31, 2008
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Ottawa, Ontario
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I am in the Ottawa Valley, and have had both mice and spiders in my darkroom.

I, too, have had a bug wandering around in my enlarger, a B22-XL, between the lamp and the condenser.

But a final word, on how one evening, when I went to print, I found a mouse dropping in the centre of my easel. I thought that the local rodents must not think very highly of my work when they leave a comment like that for me to see!
 
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