groping in the dark

Dodging and Burning

Here's another of the basic darkroom techniques for getting the most out of your prints. Say you've got a print with good density and the appropriate amount of contrast, but you see a specific area of your print you wish you could do more with or you find yourself torn between helping one area of the print and hurting another.

That's when dodging and/or burning can save the day. The two terms are interrelated and are really just flip-sides of the same concept. Both have to do with exposing selective areas of your print. Burning refers to allowing more light to fall on a certain area and dodging refers to allowing less light to fall on that area. This is accomplished by blocking the light from your enlarger with your hand, a piece of cardboard or some other opaque object.

There are tools designed specifically for this purpose. (You can also follow these instructions to make your own.) A burning board is a simple piece of black cardboard with a hole cut in the center. When you expose your print, hold the board below the enlarger so you can see the image on the board, then simply allow the hole to fall on the area of the image for which you wish to "burn" in with more light. A dodging tool is usually a piece of stiff wire with a roundish piece of black cardboard attached to one end. When exposing your print, simply block the area you wish to "dodge" out with the cardboard.

Once you have developed a good technique, this can become one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. You'll find that almost every print can be improved with some selective dodging and burning.

Some tips:

• Know the exposure time for the area you want to affect so you can properly add/subtract from the overall time with your dodge/burn techniques.


• Do not hold your burn/dodge tool too stationary. Otherwise, you'll get a harsh line. Wiggle it slightly back and forth or up and down to soften the edge of the affected area.


• If possible, get a timer with a metronome feature to help you count the seconds while you dodge and burn; otherwise, it's a bit of guesswork.


• Make sure your exposure is long enough to give you time to perform your technique. Stop down the enlarger lens if necessary.


• Practice on the blank easel a couple of times before you expose on paper. It's harder than you think!


• Be careful not to bump the enlarger or easel. You don't want to end up wit ha blurry print after all this hard work.


• Take careful notes, maybe draw a little sketch of the image with doge/burn times mapped out in case you ever need to reproduce the same image.

My example below doesn't do justice to magic you can create with good dodging and burning, but it gets my point across. I needed to keep a short exposure on the bottom half of the print to keep the nice white snow while still having enough exposure to bring out the clouds in the sky. Trick question: did I burn the clouds or dodge the snow?