Saturday, April 12, 2014

Another Darkroom Workshop Coming And A New Second Darkroom?

There will be another workshop happening this week, this one is a darkroom workshop with one of my recent view camera students. I am unsure how to spend the $100 fee, possibly I can put it towards 3 more boxes of Tri-x 100foot bulk or I might get some replacement 8x10 sheets for the film I used when I photographed dad. Either way as with all my blog advertising money and workshop money it will get reinvested in the photography.

I am thinking of setting up a second darkroom, if I can find the space. The darkroom would be used for workshops and rental purposes. I have enough equipment to easily stock a new darkroom space so the costs should be minimul. I would have to pay for a plumber to come in and hook a sink(s) up but that would be about it, I might have to install some kind of ventilation system as well. I have extra enlargers, sinks, trays, safe lights, developing tanks etc in storage so there would be no extra cost to purchase equipment. If I could continue to do workshops at the current pace and maybe rent out the darkroom occasionaly at $20 ($25) an hour I would be able to make a profit that I could use to buy more film and photo paper.

Update* It looks like I might have 2 darkroom workshops this week, one on Tuesday and one on Sunday. I can use the $220 (charging a bit more for 8x10 enlarger use) towards film, probably 35mm bulk Tri-x as mentioned earlier. I can buy 5 or 6 boxes, and pay for the extra costs out of my security money. Having a large stock of Tri-x in the freezers is soothing to me, it means I am covered no matter what kind of crazy sh-t Kodak does.

Update** Just did a B&H Photo price check, to get 5 boxes of 35mm bulk Tri-x to Edmonton would cost $390.97 USD (thats for everything, customs, shipping, GST), 6 boxes cost $466.43 USD.