In the blood red glow of a safe light, six foals crowded around one of the dark room enlargers. Lens Flare teased the knob until Silver Spoon's photo of a domino game was in sharp focus at a four by six size.

"Now when you're exposing your photos, it's important not to bump the enlarger or obstruct the projection." Lens waved a hoof through the light beam, casting a shadow over the image. "You could end up with a blurry or underexposed photo. So once you get your image cropped and focused how you want it, you shut off the light." He switched off the enlarger and opened a light proof box sitting on the table to pull out a pre sized sheet of paper.

"Always keep the papers in the closed box and only ever take out one at a time for now. So you slide your sheet in like this…" Lens squared the photo paper on the table. "The correct exposure time for this paper is five seconds so you watch the timer..." He pointed to a weird clock face on the wall that had but a single hand and went to sixty seconds.

Lens flipped the switch just as the hand hit the twenty second mark and the projection of Silver's negative came back on, shining over the photo paper. Just moments later he switched it off when the timer said twenty-five. "Now for the best part," he declared. The photographer slipped the paper off of the table and whisked it over to a tray of clear liquid. "You take your exposed paper to the developer and drop it in."

He dropped the exposure into the liquid and agitated the tray till it sank below the surface. The students gathered around, watching closely as black and gray fields began to grow on the paper and the image materialized. The dark room filled with excited murmuring as Lens dunked the photo in the fixer with tongs in his mouth and then rinsed it off. Silver Spoon grinned at the completed image.

"And there you go." He turned the enlarger back on and placed the print next to the projection of the negative. "See how they're opposites and the darker something is in the negative, the lighter it is in the positive and vice versa?"

Eager to finally see their photos, the students fumbled their way through the process, taking turns on three enlargers and cycling through the trough of chemicals until everyone had a collection of at least half a dozen prints which they were all very enamoured with.

Apple Bloom enlarged a projection of the picture of the hallway in her house, trying to examine the strange figure in the distance. If it was somepony, she didn't recognize them. They almost looked ethereal or ghost-like in the negative.

"What's that?" asked Rumble, appearing at her side.

"Ah dunno," she mumbled absently. "It's a picture Ah found."

"Is that a pony? Looks kinda creepy."

"Dunno. Maybe it's someone in a costume er somethin'. Hard to tell." Her thoughts returned to the shadow on her bedroom wall and Winona's barking at an unseen presence. "Maybe it'll make more sense if Ah print it," she mused, turning to him. She mentally stumbled in surprise when she realized how close his face was to hers.

Rumble smiled awkwardly and left to take a turn on an unoccupied enlarger. Apple Bloom sighed and set to work cropping the supposed figure about as large as she could make it within the standard 4x6 frame. Then she staged the paper.

The image she pulled from the developer bath was grainy and muddy but the strange apparition didn't look like it could be explained simply by age damage to the film. The shape was a wispy black thing with a muddled outline but she could see what looked like a pony muzzle, ears and two glowing points of light that reminded her of the glowing eyes of a cat in the dark. Apple Bloom finished processing the picture and set it on her stack, unsure what to think about it.

There was enough time to make one more print and Apple Bloom knew the one she needed. She focused the projection of a weird but inoffensive image as if she were planning to expose it. She looked over both shoulders to make sure everyone else was busy before tugging the little strip of negatives until the image of the mare on the bench was squared in the enlarger. She turned it off, swallowed and prepped the paper. One more glance over her withers and she flipped the switch, biting her lip and crowding in close as the image burned into the paper. It was so big; well, it was normal photo size but she'd never viewed the lurid picture in such detail before. It was the longest five seconds of her life.

Apple Bloom flipped the switch again and breathed a sigh of relief when the lovers vanished. She tossed the print in the developer upsidedown and nervously jiggled the tray as she watched the timer. She didn't flip it over once to look between fixer, rinse and hiding it in the bottom of her stack.

At the end of class, everyone sat back in their lecture seats while Lens gave each of them a new roll of film. "Alright," he said. "Next week you're all going to be shooting a series of portraits. There are six of you, so everyone grab a partner for the assignment right now."

Apple Bloom felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Rumble.

"Hey, wanna be my partner?" he asked.

Her heart fluttered with repressed affinity for the colt. She couldn't believe Rumble wanted to be with her. Then again, he wasn't really friends with anyone else in the photography class so who else would he pick?

"Yeah, okay," she nodded dumbly.

After seeing that everyone had paired up, Lens spoke again. "We're out of time today but Miss Cheerilee is going to fill you in on all the details of how to light your subject, pose your subject and how to get them to smile… or cry," he shrugged. "If that's the direction you want to go."

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