Dodging and Burning in the Darkroom

Dodging and burning are the darkroom's oldest tools for shaping a print. Dodging holds back light to make an area lighter; burning adds light to make an area darker. Done well, nobody notices; they just see a print that directs the eye exactly where the photographer wanted.

Dodging

To dodge, hold something between the enlarger lens and the paper during part of the main exposure, so that area receives less light and prints lighter. Use it to open up shadows in a face, lift a dark foreground or bring out detail under trees.

Dodging tools are simple: a circle or irregular shape of card taped to a thin wire, or your hand. Raise or lower the tool to change the size of the shadow it casts, and keep it moving in small circles or a gentle wobble so there is no visible edge.

Burning

To burn, give extra exposure to part of the print after the main exposure, usually through a hole cut in a card, so only that area gets more light. Typical uses are darkening a bright sky, toning down a hot highlight on a forehead, or darkening the edges of a print to hold the eye in the frame.

Make burning cards from black card with a hole in the middle, or several holes of different sizes. Your hands also make a flexible burning tool: cupped hands make a small opening, an open gap between them makes a strip.

Working out how much

Use a test strip across the area you want to change. If the main exposure is 12 seconds and the sky looks right at 24, you need to burn the sky for an additional 12 seconds. For dodging, choose the time where the area looks right and dodge it for the difference. As a guide, a third of a stop is a subtle change; a full stop is dramatic.

Think in fractions of the main exposure rather than seconds. "Burn the sky +50%" stays correct if you later make a bigger print with a longer base exposure.

Keeping it invisible

Keep tools moving; a still tool leaves a hard halo.
Work in short bursts and blend edges into natural boundaries such as a horizon or a building edge.
Avoid dodging too much: heavily dodged shadows look gray and muddy.
On variable contrast paper, burn edges with a softer grade if they become too contrasty, or use split-grade burns.

Flashing

Flashing gives the paper a brief, even exposure with no negative in the carrier, below the threshold of visible gray. It brings detail into highlights that would otherwise print as blank paper, without affecting the rest of the image much. Find the flash time with a test strip without a negative, and use about half the time that first shows gray.

The print map

Experienced printers draw a print map: a sketch of the picture with each area marked with its dodge or burn time and grade. It lets you repeat a complicated print months later and shows exactly what changed between versions. Keep it with the negative.

Dodging and burning in the darkroom predate the tools of the same name in editing software, and the same thinking applies when you scan film and edit it digitally.