was looking at some old photos of Kate bush, Stevie Nicks, and some other celebrities photoshoots from that time period and admiring the glowy affect or the purple and red colour palette on the photos wondering how I can achieve that same effect and then I realized that they did not have online editing software or even internet but the photos still look very nice and not like raw images I usually see. This may be a dumb question, I am not a photographer and do not know much about all this stuff but I am just curious.
read Ansel Adams books on the dark room and the negative if you’re really interested. In simplest terms you would use an enlarger that would flip the negative into a positive and increase the print’s size from say 36mmx24mm film to 8x10 print. The process is no different than taking an actual photo, but you’re inside the camera now. You shine light through the negative onto a piece of paper that is light sensitive similar to film. The techniques to make an area darker or lighter are simple. Each ‘print’ might be exposed for say 30 seconds, the more ‘exposed’, the stronger the print. By controlling how much area is exposed to how much light, you can “dodge and burn”. It may be as simple as putting a piece of cardstock over the paper for 5 seconds to reduce the ‘exposure’ in that area for 5 seconds less than the rest of the photo. Once exposure is complete, you move the print through the developing process and in this case you can ‘see’ the print develop. How long you leave it in the developer will also affect the outcome, but in this case you may have a soft red or brown light to help/enable you to see what’s happening. It’s quite an experience to watch it come together.