Howdy folks! My name is Jim, I live in the Seattle area and I recently joined (and subbed) to Photrio after many years (intermittently) of reading and learning from the forums going back to the APUG days.
I first shot film in the late 80s as a kid with a Minolta Maxxum 7000, and I fell in love with the darkroom even though I really didn't understand a lot of what I was doing.
I returned to the darkroom while working at Indiana University in the early 2000s, shooting film mainly on a Canon EOS Elan and also a Holga; it was during a dark time in my life after the death of my father, and I spent many long days in the university darkroom trying to hone my printing skills - and late nights at home developing rolls and trying different chemistry. I found that trying to create interesting images to print was pushing me to make more interesting art, and the process of printing was meditative and soothing.
I moved to Seattle nearly 20 years ago, heartbroken over my lack of darkroom time and my assumption that the hobby was largely dead.
My wife got me a cheap Kodak toy camera recently and it ignited my interest again - and it's been fun to see the community thriving and sparked by all the hipsters playing with film cameras. I'm back to shooting with Minoltas and also a Mamiya TLR, developing rolls at home. I just developed my first-ever color rolls at home using a Flic ECN-2 kit (which I think was pretty old, the developer powder was brown - lol), and I'm working to put together enough equipment to be able to start printing at home again, too. And there are some community darkrooms around that I want to start using.
I currently have a (perhaps foolish) dream of getting out of tech and starting a community darkroom as part of an arts center that would host courses for schools with sliding-scale fees so that anyone could get access to art instruction and darkroom learning. My partner is a talented artist across many mediums and great with children, and I think I could do a decent job instructing on photography and darkroom basics.
Our public schools here are struggling, dependent largely on parent volunteer art docents for *any* art access, so I think there would be a demand for this - although unclear if I could make a living.
I first shot film in the late 80s as a kid with a Minolta Maxxum 7000, and I fell in love with the darkroom even though I really didn't understand a lot of what I was doing.
I returned to the darkroom while working at Indiana University in the early 2000s, shooting film mainly on a Canon EOS Elan and also a Holga; it was during a dark time in my life after the death of my father, and I spent many long days in the university darkroom trying to hone my printing skills - and late nights at home developing rolls and trying different chemistry. I found that trying to create interesting images to print was pushing me to make more interesting art, and the process of printing was meditative and soothing.
I moved to Seattle nearly 20 years ago, heartbroken over my lack of darkroom time and my assumption that the hobby was largely dead.
My wife got me a cheap Kodak toy camera recently and it ignited my interest again - and it's been fun to see the community thriving and sparked by all the hipsters playing with film cameras. I'm back to shooting with Minoltas and also a Mamiya TLR, developing rolls at home. I just developed my first-ever color rolls at home using a Flic ECN-2 kit (which I think was pretty old, the developer powder was brown - lol), and I'm working to put together enough equipment to be able to start printing at home again, too. And there are some community darkrooms around that I want to start using.
I currently have a (perhaps foolish) dream of getting out of tech and starting a community darkroom as part of an arts center that would host courses for schools with sliding-scale fees so that anyone could get access to art instruction and darkroom learning. My partner is a talented artist across many mediums and great with children, and I think I could do a decent job instructing on photography and darkroom basics.
Our public schools here are struggling, dependent largely on parent volunteer art docents for *any* art access, so I think there would be a demand for this - although unclear if I could make a living.
