Often times people attribute great imagery to great darkroom practices, and perfect exposures in-camera. I think a lot of it has to do with imagination as well as knowing one’s materials.
When a negative or file isn’t very good, it really forces the person printing it to figure out what to do. Maybe boost the contrast, maybe creative burning and dodging, flashing the paper or sometimes thinking outside the box like instead of just burning in, you solarize the areas that refuse tonality. Folks often forget there is no right and wrong way to do these sorts of things. It’s just a photograph.
There really is no difference between darkroom and light room photography in this respect. The file like the negative is just the raw material, and just sculpt it into what you need to do.
