Dark Room Experiments : Dodging

Dodging

Dodgers are used to reduce the exposure time in a particular area of a photograph. For this technique you need thin wire, sellotape, thin black card, scissors and wire cutters.

Cut 25cm of wire and also cut out a circular shape of black card, then stick them together with the sellotape:

Then, expose the image for half the time (or whatever works best for your photograph). Then, when you go to expose the print for the rest of the time, place the dodger over the place which you want to be lighter:

I decided to lighten the lipsticks, so I moved the dodger around when the photograph was exposed. This didn't work too well as you can see where the dodger was, but I think it is a useful technique to know.