I initially decided to blog the construction of my new darkroom simply to record the process in case the information and my experience could be useful to someone else.
I frequent three different photography web forums which all have discussions of darkroom related matters to varying degrees. One, APUG (Analog Photography Users Group) http://www.apug.org/forums/home.php, is devoted entirely to analog photography. APUG has a thread with pictures of different members’ darkrooms. This thread has proved valuable to some when contemplating creating their own darkrooms. Doing this blog takes that a step further by documenting the whole process.
Lately, though, it’s taken on a new, personal motivation. We moved into this house last April. It’s February and so almost ten months have passed and I have yet to really start on the work. First, we had to move and get the new house up and running. Then, I changed jobs in August – same employer, but slightly different duties and much more travel. Then, after adjustment to the new job settled down, it got to be late Fall and now Winter and it’s just too unpleasant to work in a raw space.
Well, it’s time! Not only have I not had the darkroom to work in, but I have taken very few pictures in the interim and the black and white film I have shot is sitting unprocessed on my desk. I’ve got to get back to photographing. I could set up a temporary way to work in one of the bathrooms, but I made a deliberate decision not to do that because I feared it would delay the permanent space that much more. My fear goes back to something my father always said, and I agree: “there is nothing more permanent than a temporary” solution.
At this point I may have to compromise (with myself) and at least process film, but not print. Also, I am going to get back to shooting more color, which will be processed by the lab, anyway. We’ll see.
In any event, I have vowed to get to working on the darkroom and will use the blog to keep myself motivated. No one wants to read a blog that hasn’t been updated in months!
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Geez. Looks real nice. Certainly a lot bigger than my basement darkroom. I've no running water in the darkroom itself, but there is hot and cold plumbing in the adjoining laundry room so that's not a big problem. I'd watch out for those florescent fixtures though. They have a tendency to glow long after the lamps are switched off, and this may be a problem. You might want to consider rigging up some incandescent lights to use when the darkroom doesn't need to be dark, but will need to be dark soon.
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