Questions about Photography?

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Speckles

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I'm passionate about photography. I used to always use digital, until my camera broke. I'd always wanted to use an old-fashioned film camera, and my dream came true when my dad pulled out his 10-year-old Minolta. I just bought film for it (it's 35mm), and am excited to use it. I wanted to make a darkroom in one of the extra bedrooms at my house, and I was planning on buying the necessary chemicals, the special light for the dark room, etc. But then I looked it up and I realized learning the process would take a lot of time and the chemicals would take a lot of money. I am a senior in high school right now and will be graduating in a little over a month, so I am not going to go through with the dark room for now. For now, I am going to take pictures and have them developed at Wal-Mart, and I plan on using a dark room once I go to college and taking classes there to learn about the development process.
My questions are: are film cameras and dark rooms becoming obsolete? Does anyone still use dark rooms regularly? And, will I be able to create a dark room in my house when I am older and have a stable income, say as an English teacher? Will I be able to buy the things I need to develop in the dark room, and then make some money off of my photos? Would I have to learn the actual process BEFORE I get out of college and into a career, so that I'll have time?

By the way, I would like most to shoot at weddings and toddlers' birthday parties. Is this a realistic dream?
 
I have everything (except the chemicals) for a dark room here at home but not installed yet. It's also my dream to learn how to develop the pictures myself.

Ask your chemistry teacher, maybe he can give you the chemicals you need for less money!

yes, there are a lot of people who use dark rooms and if you become a photographer you learn this at your school or during your apprenticeship.
I agree with the answerer above about the rest.

yes it is realistic! I think wedding photographers are always very popular.good luck!
 
I have everything (except the chemicals) for a dark room here at home but not installed yet. It's also my dream to learn how to develop the pictures myself.

Ask your chemistry teacher, maybe he can give you the chemicals you need for less money!

yes, there are a lot of people who use dark rooms and if you become a photographer you learn this at your school or during your apprenticeship.
I agree with the answerer above about the rest.

yes it is realistic! I think wedding photographers are always very popular.good luck!
 
> are film cameras and dark rooms becoming obsolete?

No. But they are becoming highly specialized.
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> Does anyone still use dark rooms regularly?

Yes. But again very highly specialized.
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> And, will I be able to create a dark room in my house when I am older and have a stable income, say as an English teacher?

Yes.
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> Will I be able to buy the things I need to develop in the dark room,

Yes.
====
> and then make some money off of my photos?

Possibly yes. But probably no.
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> Would I have to learn the actual process BEFORE I get out of college and into a career, so that I'll have time?

Again, the success of photography depends on many (many x 100) things. The dark room (or digital) is only a small part.
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> By the way, I would like most to shoot at weddings and toddlers' birthday parties. Is this a realistic dream?

Shooting wedding + babies = yes. Doing those in film = NO. You will have to compete (in the beginning) and your bottom line cost will be a major factor. So in the beginning you will probably have to do much in digital.

Then IF you get bigger (and can charge more), you can start to do stuff in film. This is what I meant by specialized.
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BUT !!!!

Many photographer who shoot film still use photo labs to do their processing and printing. They are just too busy shooting to be spending too much time in the dark room. This was true few years ago when everybody shot film, and it is even more true today.


Good luck.......

P.S. I used to have my own dark room. I have found that I like shooting digital MUCH better, as I can experiment and have MORE control AFTER the photos were taken. In the old days, we shot the BEST image possible in camera, then left the rest to pro-labs. Now we can take complete control !!.
 
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