Hey everyone,
I've had a hairbrained idea for some time now, and I wanted to toss it up here to hear opinions, and thoughts.
My current plan is to make a permanent exodus from California in the next few years, and in the mean time, save funds and performing reconnaissance/travel to various places to get a feel for the local climate/culture. Never fear, I will definitely will not be bringing much of any "California" with me, wherever I might end up
A large part of this plan will be a permanent darkroom, finally. My initial thought was having a larger outbuilding to house both my sewing shop(Stone Photo Gear) and darkroom under the same roof. Looking at these container conversions, I've been reconsidering the repurposing of a high-cube container and converting it into a dedicated darkroom building, complete with 2 sinks, shelving and counter space to house both a setup for contact printing LF negatives, and enlarging medium format negatives with a 4x5 bench top enlarger. Black and white darkroom use only. I do not require tons of space, but being 6'5" tall, the high cube's added head room would allow less of a 'cramped' feeling, in my opinion. Water hookup from a garden hose would be the source, and power would be run underground from the house. Again, no massive amount of resources required, as I would be primarily contact printing with a low wattage light bulb.
Both sides of container would be air conditioned and darkroom would be setup to have consistent air flow, as I would be building a fume hood for each sink, to minimize airborne vapors.
A 40' container would allow both a wet side and dry side, where mounting, spotting and matting could be done. It could also house a digital printer for printing color photographs(which I do quite a bit, but just thinking forward). Both sides would have an air conditioner set up as to maintain proper temperature and humidity levels.
Seeing that a single use high-cube container runs about $3-6k depending on length, this could potentially be a reasonable cost for a weather tight setup. I would install a side entrance door on the light side, most likely a sliding glass door of some sort, to allow lots of natural light into the "light" side of the container. Internally, a pocket door would separate darkroom from light room, making it light tight for loading holders when home(Harrison tent in the field).
Does this sound feasible, and/or reasonable? I'm 31 presently, and in no rush to settle down or start a family, but I am open to such if the right woman was to present herself. I'm now at the point of truly realizing a direction I want to take my life in, and that would involve traveling several months per year to photograph and when home, building gear to support other photographers/videographers work as I am now doing, as a side business.
Thanks for your time, and thoughts.
-Dan
p.s. YES, I have seen pictures of that military darkroom container posted here. Way too cramped for me, but certainly something to admire
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