This photo of Wayne Rainey shows one of my crude attempts at Burning and Dodging a print.  I think most people today call it Dodging and Burning, but when I was doing darkroom work it was called Burning and Dodging, at least that’s how I remember it. Basically it was a process used when printing you selectively gave more or less exposure to a certain area of the print to highlight or black out a part of the picture using your hand or various shaped dodging tools. In this case I dodged Rainey and his motorcycle to “burn in” or overexpose the background to make it darker.

There was a real art to making prints and some of the real experts at Burning and Dodging could produce stunning black & white prints. Burning and Dodging can be done today on the computer, but to my eye it doesn’t quite have the same look as has using real light and shade using various tools under your enlarger.

A black & white print of Wayne Rainey using burning and dodging techniques to darken the background. (Larry Lawrence photo)