My studio is a piece of black fabric gaffer taped to the wall beside a big north-facing window in the sitting room. I develop film in the kitchen. My printing is all done in hired space in a public darkroom that is *beautifully* equipped. I wish I had the space and kit to print at home...
I'm a garage guy myself. Most of my work gets done at night since there are a few light leaks here and there during the day.
David,Originally Posted by davidb
Send me a PM with your address and I'll send you my PS 7 disk which I no longer use. I have a couple of licensed versions of CS2 so you can use it now and use it later to upgrade to CS2 or CS3.
Joe
I shoot only available light (that is the highbrow way of saying I don't have a studio and flash confuses me). However, I just got a darkroom built, finally, and love it. Even though you are not using an enlarger, it is still worthwhile having a darkroom, however small, just to load/unload film without having to use a tent or bag.
For the record, my darkroom is 10x15 with two enlargers, one 4x5 with colour head, one 5x7 with condensor head. I have about 12 feet of sink and 10 feet of dry counter. Lots of storage space underneath for paper, chemistry, developing equipment, drying screens, etc. I do all my matting and mounting in another room.
I use a computer for scanning negs to just get an idea of what I might want to do with them. I don't make final versions on the inkjet printer, although I do scan final prints to send to others. The only thing I truly like about digital is that it is like Penicillin to the infection of dust!!!!
I used to have a very nice studio and dark room, in my house... I sold the house... I had to...I moved accross country to...bachelor apartment. Now, my entire apartment is a darkroom.
. Bathroom is as wet room and room is where I live and do stuff in dark.
So sad. I miss my state of the art darkroom. But, It will change. I will have my stodio one day. Hope that I win 6-49 this Saturday
I have all my space in two barns that are a few yards from the house. The newer barn is modified post an beam construction with no support columns giving me 28x32 clear space for a studio on the second floor. The studio is purposely designed for shooting including the wiring for my lighting system. One corner of the studio serves as a meeting space when I want to sit round a table with clients, A double door opens from the studio into the storage area where i store lights, stands, studio stands, scrims, etc. Everything can roll in and out as needed. There is also a large door into the studio to allow heavy equipment to be delivered directly. Stairs in the storage area lead downstairs to my work area. The ability to wheel things in and out of the studio allow me to rapidly reconfigure it for workshops when wanted.
The work area is 24x24 and has a large work table for matting, framing and sorting prints, etc. A scanning workstation dedicated to the two scanners (IQsmart 3 and Cezanne) and another workstation where I do image editing work, writing, etc. This is an L shaped workspace which also houses my light table. The room also houses the scanners and printers (current printers include a Z3100, B9180 and 6100). There is a half bath and a darkroom off one wall. The darkroom includes a 6 foot sink, mostly filled with my ATL2300 at the moment and an 8 foot workbench dry area. The Durst 184 is packed and likely to stay that way. There is a door to the outside and also the original barn doors which now open into the downstairs of the 28x32 barn which serves as packing and shipping and more storage and as a garage for some cars, trucks and a tractor. The original barn doors allow me to have stuff like big printers offloaded into the garage area, assembled there and then wheeled into the work room. The workroom is comfortable for me and as many as three clients.
I think I designed and redesigned this space at least three times before I had what I wanted (and I still don't have as much storage space as I'd like).
It was definitely on my mind when I was buying the house- I saw the potentials of the space. At the time, I didn't anticipate having a Century Master studio camera and matching #4 Century Studio stand (I think it's a #4). That takes up a fair chunk of room, but I still manage to work ok. I'm lucky that my dining set only seats 4, so it is easy to move around even just by myself.
Another converted garage. Wet darkroom (trays), and contact prints. My 'studio' is just big enough to do single person portraits.
john
I am at an interesting time; We have just bought a house and my wife, daughter, and I are dividing up territory. My wife is a painter so she also needs studio space. We have rented a huge house for three years in which we all have ample studio/darkroom/playroom space. However, we are moving into a much smaller house and have been going back and forth about how best to divide the space.
It would be best if we could replace the garage (why waste it on a car?) with a two story building with north-facing windows on the top, however considering that almost all of our available cash just went to the downpayment it is doubtful if this will happen in the next few years.
So far we have decided that she gets the most of the garage (once the roof is repaired, woodstove put in, and walls insulated) although I get to install a fumehood in there for some of my nastier processes. Most (other than the laundry room and the cedar closets) of the basement is mine for darkroom and studio space, with my computer and printer the upstairs study. This means that I will have purchase more artificial (probably fluorescent) lighting, but is better than being without studio space.
Eventially we will build our dream studio, but not until after remodelling the kitchen, bathroom, and properly insulating our new-to-us 1894 Victorian.
I have nothing like any of the above great arrangements...
I have a very small bathroom where I can cover both doors with blackout curtains that run floor-to-ceiling that my wife made. The pedestal sink is big enough to support a 3'x3' square piece of plywood, which will hold 4 8x10 developing trays, although with the board in place, I cannot use the faucet, so it is dry for all intents and purposes. I can put a contact frame on the toilet seat and a portable light on the back of toilet and do 4x5 contact prints. It is the best I'm probably going to have. I have an Apple desktop for scanning & Photoshopping my MF film, connected to an IBM desktop with lots of additional disk drives as a server. And I develop my film at the kitchen sink after loading it in the afore mentioned "darkroom". I send all my scanned & PS work out to be printed.
I'd love to have a reasonably permanant space that was larger to put up a darkroom, but that's not likely, especially since we are now talking about moving to a smaller house, since my son has gone away to college. Of course, I'd like to have a room where I could set up my ham radio station again and a place in the yard to put up a small observatory structure to house my telescopes, but neither of those are happening, either. Everything I do, hobby-wise, has to be set up & taken down with each use.
Last edited by wclavey; 26-Oct-2007 at 11:49. Reason: Additional thought
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