You shouldn't do this whilst repeatedly glancing at the subject, and the light, within an accidents-can-happen reach of deep, dark water whilst also checking exposure readings with a separate hand-held meter... but you do when you must!

The light was changing and the subject was changing... the subjects were slowly drifting out of the light and into the fast lengthening shadows... so it was zip-zip-zip as a complete roll of film was exposed with one finger on the shutter-button of one of my motor-driven Leicas... and the other on the rapid-focus trigger of the lens. The 400/560mm Leitz Telyt lens system had a focusing control which was noticeably faster than any other long lens (including those made by Novoflex) for many years until recent generations of auto-focus took the honors. The passage of time has clouded my exact recollection... but I seem to remember the long lens wavering slightly from side to side between exposures as the torque of the camera’s motor-winder pulled against my grip.

Making a print from this particular negative is where the "dodger" name I originally used for my first weblog came from (called "Diary of a Dodger" - it confused US football fans and many other readers alike). In the darkroom a printer “dodges out" parts of a projected image to prevent overexposure of that particular area of the print. The opposite technique of increasing exposure on a localized area of a print, by using the hands or pieces of card with different size and shaped holes cut into them, is called "burning-in."

This is all pretty basic stuff for a traditional wet-darkroom worker although the more adept practitioners can literally project rabbits, dogs, ducks and an ark’s complement of other animals as well as oddities and some indescribably rude things onto the enlarger baseboard, as an artiste does on stage between a spotlight and a white screen. But in the darkroom you won't hear any "oohs” and “ahhhs" from an audience... just the ticking of a clock or metronome as you strive to keep to a set repetition of carefully timed dodging-out and burning-in manipulations in case you have to repeat the image... which is why my wife has to wait for “her swans” because, as I said at the beginning, it's a so-and-so to print.