Interesting home-made w/a 8x10 camera

[Dan Fromm]

http://www.galerie-photo.com/construction-8x10-eric-constantineau.html

If you can't read French, Google Translate will help you understand the article. Note the bathroom darkroom.

[Jody_S]

Eric is a really nice guy, I bought a few things from him last year (his entire stock of 8x10 film- from the article, he took those shots in 2009). He is an excellent photographer, his Detroit shots are to die for. As for the bathroom darkroom, I assure you that's just for drying stuff. His photo gear takes up pretty much his entire apartment. His build skills are a little primitive, but that's not the first 8x10 he has successfully built. He encouraged me to build mine from scratch, but I found my Deardorff for less than it would have cost me in materials so I gave up on that.


The shots in the article: the high-ceilinged interior glass wall shot is from the 'Grande Bibliotheque', the Provincial library in Montreal right across from the Greyhound bus station. It's imposing, inside and out, but the exterior is permanently roped off because glass panels keep falling off and crashing to the sidewalk (!!!). The crane shot is from a bridge over the Lachine canal, where Ville St-Pierre meets Lasalle (I lived about 300 yards from that bridge when he took the shot). There are many historic warehouses and manufacturing plants in that area, I'm sure Eric has been inside one or two. There is also a train tunnel filled with graffiti, about a mile from there, that Eric has photographed from the inside. I declined to try it myself, as 3 teenagers were hit and killed by trains inside within a few months. I'm pretty sure I know the building where the last shot was taken, it would have been demolished years ago except it's listed as a historical property.