It feels very clumsy - and you literally work (almost) in the dark with (almost) no control. And I basically don't see anything of what i am doing - when doing self portrait light paintings.

Strange. I used to be so open to the uncontrolled within photography (when it was about experimental photography, light painting, etc). Maybe I have change a bit or two... I simply still feel clumsy and have no clue about the outcome what so ever. I used to have a sense of how things might turn out.

But it feels like i am "blind from within".

Strange.

Post processing in Photoshop

does help quite a lot, because I can decide which part of the photo to make brighter or darker, by evening out imbalances to the naked eye. That does help a lot, no doubt. And makes the results better compared to the RAW file. I guess that too is part of the experimental photography. It wasn't perfect with light painting experiments back in the days of film based photography, either.

With the difference that the amount of post correction was rather limited (more, if you made your own prints in the darkroom, whether in BW or in color - you had the ability to lighten up some areas, while darkening down other areas - and with that bring better balance to the overall photo).

Working in the "analog" photo darkroom

was clearly my favorite, due to the fact, that i could shape the final outcome to my liking. It did take a lot of work sometimes, but was worth it. Yet, trying to color correct a partial area of the image, (color negatives to positive print) was a chore. Plus that I also got color shifts when darkening an area. So, I used that only very lightly in order to avoid any too strong color shifts. My main thinking was always, trying to get an image right as possible from the beginning (no cheating or sloppy work!!), so that i didn't have to make too many changes / corrections in the darkroom (which only complicated things too much).