Hello from glossop
 

Hi all,

It’s great to now be a part of this group, so I’ll kick things off with a little bit about me!

I’m intending on establishing a darkroom for myself but possible a community darkroom if I can convince our local council that it’s a worth enterprise. To kick things off I’ve been developing black and white 120 and 4x5 in daylight tanks, but having just landed a couple of jobo autolab atl-1000 units I plan and getting one really solid unit up and running c41, and keeping the other for spares.

I’m a professional commercial photographer. Mostly architecture, some whisky branding, some portraiture, and a bunch of other random things. I started around 1990 as an assistant in Manchester shooting large format, vanished off to Perth, Australia in the mid 1990s where I shot on large format and 120, then digital, and now, back in the Uk I’m shouting digital for commissioned work, and mostly large format for personal projects and fun.

I’ve dabbled in platinum printing but have a few years of black and white printing as well. Getting back to that some day soon is my hope.

Thanks all.
:)
Adrian

Welcome aboard Adrian.

Looks like you have some interesting darkroom plans. Hope you can get them to work (I guess the current restrictions are not helping at the moment).

Have fun!

Welcome Adrian.

Mike

Welcome to fadu, Adrian. Best of luck with your plans.

Welcome Adrian, and good luck.

David

Hi, Adrian.

Welcome to the forum, and good luck with the darkroom project

Ian

Welcome to FADU, Adrian, and the best of luck with establishing a community darkroom. A useful thing if some pundits about the revival of film are to be believed. It helps that you are on the edge of Greater Manchester as well in terms of numbers.

Interesting that as late as 1990 you were able to get a job as an assistant in LF photography

Mike

Neibourhood darkroom
 

I have designed a couple of items of darkroom equipment in the last few years, the target market being individual amateurs with darkrooms. But the actual sales have been to schools and colleges (worldwide) and darkrooms for hourly rental (mainly outside UK, predominately USA/Canada). The most obvious business model is similar to a commercial gym, which offers three sources of income:
- membership fee
- sale of materials (in this case film, paper and chemistry)
- one-to-one tuition
Ilford did a survey a few years ago - you might use some of their acquired wisdom in setting-up.
The main aim should be to position your darkroom in the middle of a prosperous, densely-populated area, to minimise the distance potential users have to travel. That also helps with front-of-house marketing. Although food and photo-chemicals don't mix, it would be nice to have a takeaway next door - pick up a bite to eat after work and before starting the serious stuff...

Welcome Adrian :)

Good to see you Adrian.
From the northlands