Chemistry

Today, I’m grateful for Chemistry.

Allahu Akbar!It’s Saturday, and I had 3 rolls of film in need of developing. I put 24 rolls through the last batch of C-41 chemicals, including a couple of rolls of movie film, and decided it was time for a new batch.

Alhamdulillah for chemistry! Without it, there wouldn’t be plastics for us to make keyboards out of, there wouldn’t be cooked food, and there certainly wouldn’t be analog photography.

Sure, we use chemistry to make electronic components and plastics that make up digital sensors and computers, but it’s indirect, hidden behind manufacturing processes and capitalism and all. With analog photography, it’s right here, right now: Chemistry!

All praise and thanks be to the Creator for creating all of it: the chemicals themselves, the rules that govern their interactions, the interactions themselves, and their results. Alhamdulillah!

And here’s one of the results of today’s developing session.

It’s not a great shot by any stretch. I “scanned” it (and the rest of the roll, and another roll) at ISO800, so some of the grain visible came off the D7000 sensor… But it’s still the result of light interacting with some silver salts, and then those silver salts interacting with some other chemicals that changed the silver into a photograph, and other chemicals that fixed the image in place. I’m not sure where the blue streak came from: it’s not in any other frame. Wherever it came from, it came about thanks to chemistry, and all thanks and praise belong to Allah for creating all this and teaching us how to use it.

اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ
الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ
عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ

Recite, and your Lord is the most Generous –
Who taught by the pen –
Taught man that which he knew not.

Alhamdulillah.

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