My thanks to all you encouraged me to proceed with my "Photographers Notebook" postings. I intend to do this and am working on the first piece. I will call it "Photographers Notebook. Prologue - My Journey". I'll leave it to the good judgement of "QT" to decide where to place it.

As I begin to work on my writing, I took a break and went down to my new darkroom/gallery and was testing for light leaks on a new door seal system. Since it takes 30-60 minutes for the eyes to become dark aclimated (Navy pilot training). I took a short nap. The GraLab awaked me and I promptly proceed to get up off of the carped floor and my head struck the underside of the film loading counter. *@#*^$&@#...dammmmmm.

Then, to compound my pain, I remembered that I hade forgotten something something really important. MY GLOW-IN-THE-DARK...DOTS....that I have used for twenty years.

I developed this many years ago, and this technique has served me well.

I used the green, 'glow-in-the-dark' stickey tape to place little dots all over the darkroom. My old roll is 20 years old, and still works just fine. (I think Porters Camera Store sells it.) It is about an inch wide and must be ten feet long.

Get a single hole paper punch from your local office supply store, and some of this tape. Punch a ton of little 1/4" dots out of the ribbon of glow tape. Place these little dots at 12" intervals all over your darkroom on the VERTICAL edges of counters, sinks, tables, shelves, etc. It takes patience to use an X-Acto #11 knife blade to separate the paper backing from the glow side, but well worth your time and effort. Then, just stick these tiny dots around your darkroom, at 12" intervals.

When I first started using this technique, twenty years ago, I ran tests with the fastest black and white film available, and found no fog problem with any of the films. I will re-run these tests in the coming week, but I expect no problem. It's like 'fireflies' on an Iowa evening, at 50' away.

It is comforting to go 'total black' while loading holders, or Nikor reels, and know where counters, sinks, and other thinks "lurk"... waiting to hurt your body. No more..#@$&^+)*@.....Dammmmm, that hurt!

Try it....I think you'll like it.

Richard Boulware