Who Am I?
My name is Dave Krueger and I live in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. I am a retired electrical engineer who does traditional darkroom photography as a hobby. My engineering career started when I was 32, but I had my own darkroom by the time I was 16. While I briefly operated a part time commercial photography business catering to local technology companies, I no longer do any photography for hire and do not actively market my work. I shoot purely for enjoyment. I have occasionally exhibited my work in local venues and have had images presented in print and web based periodicals. Currently, the biggest display of my work is in my home where pictures hang on virtually every wall.
About half of my house is devoted to photography. I have a studio, darkroom, and frame shop and not a week goes by that I am not engaged in some photography related activity.
Traditional darkroom photography is both an art and craft. While hardly a master at the art, I love the craft. Darkroom technique can be learned quickly, but may take years to master and, because of the laboratory environment, has a different dynamic than modern digital photography. Traditional photographers tend to shoot fewer frames, are limited by the materials in use, and use different image manipulation tools. While film has been expereincing a slight resurgence in popularity of late, darkroom printing is only practiced by a fraction of analog enthusiasts.
The images on these pages are straight unedited scans of darkroom prints made from 35mm, medium format, and 4×5 large format black and white negatives. Darkroom print manipulations are limited to contrast adjustment, cropping, and burning/dodging. I most commonly make 8″ x 10″ resin coated prints for archiving and scanning and 16″ x 20″ fiber based prints for framing. All of my prints, RC and fiber, are now selenium toned. Most prints are stored in archival boxes and handled only with cotton gloves. Yes, I am obsessive. A small minority of prints are scanned and added to one of my two photography websites. An even smaller number find their way onto the walls of my home, replacing older images.
If you've visited my blog, you may have guessed that I engage in projects related to photography. I like to build and modify the tools and environment of my hobby. My engineering nature and tendancy toward regimentation and analysis drives me to research topics, collect references, and churn out enless notes and records of my projects which are useful for blog articles.
In addition to this website, I have additional work posted at City Shadows website. Like the photos here, they are (with some identified exceptions) also scanned from black and white darkroom prints.
On Social Networks as:
- @davekrueger on bsky
- @dkruegerphoto on X