I took this at the zoo. The sea lion was playing with the kids and they were reaching and jumping begging it for attention. Just after I took this picture, the sea lion playfully snapped at the kids through the plexiglass, and they all happily screamed. I hope the picture makes you smile.
My grandpa gave me an olympus om-2n, and a family friend was offloading his entire darkroom, so I ended up with all the stuff for free. Since then I've been blundering my way along, and after a year or so I feel like I'm starting to get some control. I'm not normally an artistic person, but I really enjoy how methodical you need to be with the analog process. If you enjoy this, I will post a few more. I had a manic episode a couple months ago, and produced some pictures that I think are ok.
Thanks very much :) I was so excited when I saw the negative with the spiral come out of the fixer. Most of my rolls are "eh", but sometimes a frame will scream "print me now!".
I have done a little dodging and burning, but so far only in the service of "correcting" things. This negative was really challenging to print. I had to burn in the background and dodge the sea lion pretty hard to be able to get detail in both. I will probably revisit it down the road as there is a lot more detail in the sea lion than you can see here. Ultimately, I decided that the strength of the spiral was more important to me than getting full detail in the sea lion, but that decision was motivated by my skill deficit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯