I’m noticing a pattern here.

For the last two years, I’ve been waiting about a year before developing my negatives. I just finished developing 10 rolls out of 20 that had been rolling around in a cigar box for roughly a year, most of them from a trip we took to Rome.

It’s true that over the last couple of years I haven’t spent as much time shooting as I would like. That has to change this year. But I can’t help noticing that it’s also taken me much longer to get to the negatives. There was a time when I made it a point to develop them right away. Now, for whatever reason, I don’t.

So what is it? Procrastination? Laziness? Or something else?

Then I came across a clip of Garry Winogrand talking about how he would deliberately wait a year before developing his film. He believed it allowed him to approach the work with fresher eyes and less emotional attachment, making it easier to judge the photographs more honestly.

That idea stuck with me.

Winogrand was one of the great photographers of the 20th century, so who am I to argue? Instead of labeling my delay as laziness or procrastination, maybe I’ll choose to see it differently. Maybe there’s something valuable in the distance. Maybe time creates clarity.

That said, I have developed my own process for actually getting the work done.

I use the half bath on the first floor. It’s small, simple, and it works. There’s a window in there that I cover with a cloth that has a rubber backing on one side, which blocks out 100% of the light. I tape it to the wall, pair up the film I’m developing with the tanks, and get everything staged.

I have several tanks, and if most of the film is the same stock, I can fit up to 10 rolls at a time.

Usually, I don’t develop on the same day I load the film into the tanks. I’ve found that doing everything in one shot makes the day feel overloaded. So I’ll load the film, clean up, and then come back the next day ready to process.

I keep all my gear and chemicals organized in a large bin, which makes the whole setup easy and efficient. Once everything is mixed and ready, I can work my way through 10 rolls over the course of a weekend. Development usually happens on Saturday and Sunday, and then throughout the week I try to get some scanning done after work.

Maybe this lag between shooting and developing, along with the bulk processing, is actually efficient in its own way. Maybe it’s just part of an evolving process. Maybe it will change over time, and maybe it won’t.

Either way, I’m enjoying figuring it out.