Busy Setting Up Darkroom
All my free time has been spent setting up a darkroom in an old shack on the acreage. My fiance’s father has used it for everything from slaughtering animals to hanging meat to storing power tools. I spent many hours washing the walls, vacuming up the cob-webs and repainting the interior. Today I ripped all the scrap sheet metal off the roof, revealing two large holes in the ceiling. These holes were leaking water into the shack and the sheet metal was the father-in-law’s attempt to stop it. I replaced all the rotten wood and laid down tar paper. I will re-shingle the roof properly this Sunday.
To add spice to the marinade, some kind people let me borrow some 35/120mm darkroom equipment while I hunt down a 4×5 view camera and enlarger within my budget. The stipulation was they get access to the their equipment when they need it, which I found very reasonable. When I’m finished fixing the shack I’ll be moving the equipment to the new studio and setting up an apparatus to hold water and maintain its temperature. I’m probably going to hook a small laundry room sink to the water barrel for feed-water and hook the drain to a barrel outside. The barrel will be circulated with an aquarium pump and it’s temperature will be held with an aquarium heater. I don’t know how well that will work during the winter but I think, when winter brings its -20 winds, I’ll be questioning the temperature of the entire shack before worrying about the water.
It’s going to be a lot of work but I feel it will be worth it. My usual approach to photography is a careful, planned method, even when shooting digital. I’ve worked in a darkroom with 35mm before but doing things such as Zone developing is tough for an entire roll of film. Shooting on sheets just feels like it will “be the right thing to do.” Not to mention that they can scan into 1.5GB images!
