My Alternative Process Darkroom and Studio Build

As with many small business owners around the world, COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on my livelihood. In early March of 2020, pleasure travel, which was where the majority of my income was derived from, essentially ceased to exist. Since late 2016, I have slowly been building out studio space in a building in the town where my wife and I live, but really hadn’t had much time to devote to it besides finishing up the drum scanning studio. So I decided to devote all my time and energy in 2020 to finishing the construction and design of the space.

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Design

Ample space is never much of an issue in the flyover states, and I am fortunate to have quite a bit to work with. The building where my studio is located is about a 7,000 square foot former hardware store that I share with my father. He’s in IT, and has the majority of the building devoted to his needs, but was kind enough to let me use about 1,000 square feet in the back of the building.

I had planned on three areas for my use - the scanning area, which would be climate and dust controlled, a dry area for paper handling, inkjet printing, and print finishing, and a full darkroom designed around alternative process printing.

The darkroom was the biggest hurdle. I had done a fair amount of alternative process printing, and a ton of research, but all with platinum palladium. Since the majority of my work is in color, there are very few darkroom printing options these days.

While the overall design of the darkroom changed through out the building process, this was the preliminary space I designed for work with carbon transfer and other alternative processes.

The sink was one of the more fun design elements. I ended up going to a local stainless steel welding shop to have it custom made to fit the dimensions of the room. The three basins essentially act as large trays, as carbon transfer and gum bichromate printing is all water developed.

I set my focus on designing the darkroom for carbon transfer printing, which can be printed in color. With the guidance of Calvin Grier, a master color carbon printer and now friend of mine, I planned the space around a large stainless steel sink, a wall mounted vacuum table, and a large glass coating table.

The scanning room was mostly easy - it just needed to be big enough for the scanner and some table space and be climate and dust controlled.

The large hallway / room connecting the space between the darkroom and scanning room was originally designed to just be a space to hang my work, but as construction began, I realized it could be much more useful, and would eventually become a dry working space for print finishing. We still designed the room to utilize track lighting for displaying framed prints, and it eventually would become one of my most used spaces.

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Construction

In late 2016, we gutted the entire 7,000 square feet. The building had been somewhat neglected by several renters, and sat empty for years prior. The walls were bright red, the electrical was a mess, there was a creepy, oddly placed shower in a makeshift bathroom, the roof leaked, and the infestation of mice was…disturbing.

Over the course of about 6 months, my dad and I made a floor plan and started putting up some walls and the space really started to come together.

The planned darkroom was an old office with a dropped ceiling and an awful orange/tan filthy plaid carpet. We gutted everything down to the studs in the dry side and scraped the walls in the wet side, raised the ceiling, put in new lighting, electrical, and flooring.

We raised the ceiling outside the darkroom in the dry working space to 10 feet and put in a strip of track lighting. At the time we were planning for that space, I really didn’t have much of a use for it, so I figured that it would be a good place to hang finished pieces, but it quickly became filled with useful equipment.

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Putting it all Together

The scanning room was our first priority to finish, as I had Hudson Grafik coming in to service, refurbish, and setup the drum scanner.

There was no heat in the building, as the gas had been shut off years prior, so getting sheetrock mud to dry in an efficient amount of time was also a nightmare. What was supposed to take a matter of a few days to finish the room ended up taking a week, and when the service tech showed up for the Tango, we were in the process of moving in a few pieces of furniture and watching the paint dry.

The scanning room was completed back in 2017 and the majority of the rest of the project had been left unfinished until March of 2020, when I started working on the space again. While all the major construction and design was relatively finished, assembling everything and getting the last pieces of equipment needed to be done. One of the biggest hurtles was getting the sink designed and installed. The entire dimensions ended up being about 12.5 feet by 4 feet and was made from stainless steel. No local stainless shop would even touch it and a dedicated “darkroom sink” was far too expensive to have custom made, so I went to a stainless steel shop in Wichita, KS called Starflite Custom Manufacturing, who quickly and affordably made the sink for me. The problem then was getting it delivered…or rather, delivering it myself. The sink with the stand weighed around 700 lbs and was loaded onto our trailer with a forklift (and 4 guys to stabilize it.) So getting it off, through all the doors and into the darkroom was a challenge. With 6 of us, we managed to get it in place after about an hour and a half with no missing fingers or damaged egos.

I installed a water mixing valve from Hass Manufacturing, and plumbed in the three drains, two faucets, two spray hoses, and a few other points of water along the sides of the sink for print washers, mixed water access, hot water access, and cold water access.

A local cabinet maker, who had just refinished my wife and I’s kitchen, made me a line of cabinets and a countertop for a bit of a working space and some in-darkroom storage.

I also had a local welder and friend, Louie Lemmert, make me a metal frame for a coating table that I had powder coated and would be used for pouring emulsions, coating paper for platinum prints, etc. The tabletop is a 5/8” piece of 48x60” annealed glass that was machine leveled for flatness and overall level.

I also wanted to be able to both print my own inkjet prints, print for others, and proof prints for clients for commercial work in the darkroom, so I purchased and installed a new Epson p9570, which has been churning out gorgeous prints ever since.

The last piece of the puzzle was the vacuum table for the exposure unit. I purchased the unit from a company who specializes in commercial screen printing equipment and would be wall mounted for space savings. I wanted to have the ability to print (at least) 32x40” image sizes, so the frame needed to hold at least a 40x50” piece of paper. Yet again…it was heavy. After a day of fighting it, we were able to get it secured to the wall and up and running.

When I was apprenticing for Stan Klimek in September of 2020, he so kindly gifted me one of his spare Olite AL53 exposure units.

The UV integrator that came with it (the unit that controls the amount of light projected) was extremely variable, so for accurate calibration, I needed something a little bit more consistent.

A few colleagues highly recommended using Ian Leake’s Light Counter system, which did have a power controller, but this unit was high voltage and had all kinds of other features that didn’t prove to be a cut and dry implementation.

The unit has a shutter, which flips over the UV bulb to start and stop the exposure because most metal halide bulbs have inconsistencies in UV output during their warmup time. On the power supply, there was a switch that controlled the shutter, so once the unit was on, all you had to do was manually flip open the switch to control the shutter.

In order to integrate the LC system, I bought the power controller, split a cable in half and bypassed the switch through Ian Leake’s relay which is controlled by the integrator.

So now, with a simple press of the button to start the exposure on the integrator, the shutter flips open to begin the exposure, and flips closed when the sensor has collected the set amount of UV light.

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The Finished Project

After 5 years of planning, designing, dreaming, and a whole lot of hard work, the darkroom is now “finished” as of September of 2020. I’m now fully operational and cranking out platinum prints for myself and other photographers with my new platinum palladium printing service.

Since I have been drum scanning for others, I have realized how exciting it is creatively to work alongside other artists in the creation of their work. Printing, especially darkroom printing, is somewhat of a succession of that and it’s so exciting to bring other photographers’ work to final print. It’s also a pleasant creative break for myself at times as well, since I am a working artist and burnout can easily happen.

This dream definitely wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my wife and my family, and especially my dad who has been so generous with his space and assistance throughout the whole process.

There’s more to come! While I’m running with platinum palladium, I am head first into gum bichromate printing and will soon travel to Spain to study color carbon transfer printing with Calvin Grier. Stay tuned!

I am also constantly (probably begrudgingly to some) posting behind the scenes stories on my Instagram, Facebook, andTwitter accounts. Follow along to check out what it’s like to work in my darkroom:

The Oceano Dunes

Sand dunes are somewhat of a photographer's paradise - at least for me. After living on the central coast for almost six months, I had never so much as heard about these, let alone ventured out here. After just receiving my Mamiya 7ii a few weeks earlier, I decided there was no better place to give it a test run than out at the dunes, which was practically in my back yard. Late fall in California marks the end of the dry season, and the dunes were feeling it. The wind had been blowing all day, and about two hours before sunset, it subsided leaving the perfect ripples. 

Clear skies are typically looked down upon with landscape photography. The texture in the sky adds interest and the reflected light from a layer of clouds illuminates the land. In the sand dunes, however, photographic opportunities are endless. With severe clear skies, I looked toward the texture in the sand. 

Over the past year, I have been devoting a fair amount of time studying photographic art. I stumbled upon the work of Edward Weston when visiting Carmel, CA. Flipping through a book entitled "Dune" I realized the work was created less than five miles from my home in the Oceano Dunes. His work inspired this small I created on my Mamiya 7ii, all on transparency film. All are available for purchase, so please contact me if you are interested.

Fall Color Wrap-Up - The Sierra Nevadas and Rocky Mountains

Autumn is one of my favorite times of year, especially when it comes to photography. Aside from football starting up, the MLB postseason (go Royals!), and the weather finally cooling off after a brutal 75 degree California Central Coast summer, the aspens begin their annual transition. I chase the color every year, usually in the Colorado Rockies and Arkansas hardwood forests. This year, I had a chance to explore a completely new area - the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

I took off the weekend before my wedding to have a little bachelor getaway with my good friend Tyler Brigham and my dog, Charlie. We made a loop down past the southern region of the Sierras, through the Mojave and up to Bishop for the first night. The color around Bishop Creek and Aspendell was fantastic, but different compared to what I’ve been used to.

The groves in Colorado are something out of this world. Gigantic and mature, these organisms span entire mountain valleys and up into the alpine region of the Rockies. The groves near Bishop were small, young, and quite patchy. While still beautiful, many of the intimate scenes looking through the trees were snuffed out due to the forests being so thick and the trees being so immature.

The three panoramic photos you see above are all from the Crested Butte area near Kebler Pass. From these three photos, you can really tell the difference between the forests around the Bishop, CA area and the giant forests of Colorado. The spacious, mature trees make for incredibly unique and textural images. 

Charlie had a blast on the trip. He had the chance to approve a couple exposures, meet some tourists, romp around in the wilderness, and even got to drive a little bit - his four favorite activities. The 8x10 got some good use on this past trip, and not including my evening through Yosemite on the way home (post to come later) I ended up shooting 3 sheets of film. Two of these were the aspen scene from above and the the third was from the scene below. 

The aspen scene above, I've entitled "Autumn's Grasp." I spotted the scene earlier in the afternoon on the day we arrived to the area and knew I needed the perfect low contrast light to photograph it. I set up well before sunset and waited for the calm twilight to come. As the sun sank well below the mountains behind me, the warmth of the sky above reflected a gorgeous light onto the grasses and aspens. I have been forcing myself to see more "intimate landscapes." These scenes are quite difficult to compose and photograph, but I find that as an artist, I strive to search for these compositions. They can be incredibly unique and have so much to say if you let yourself into the image. I composed this photograph intentionally symmetrical. I loved how the textures and colors stacked into perfect thirds, the brown grasses, the almost purple brush, and the pine trees, with that pop of fall color directly in the center. Something new from me, that's for sure.

The white granite in the Sierra Nevadas is an absolute dream to photograph. Because of its silvery / white color, the stone reflects nearly every quality of light, especially during the twilight hours. In the photograph below, the calm twilight of sunrise sometimes known as "the blue hour" was reflected by the bright white granite foreground. Typically, I don't photograph many scenes with clear skies. Clouds add texture and interest to usually otherwise dull photograph, but this particular scene worked quite well with clear skies. With the small pops of fall color in the distance, you can almost feel the peaceful, crisp autumn morning when looking at this photograph. 

Because these photographs are so new and need drum scans and go through rigorous dust and spot removal, these are all still in their early stages of proofing for print. If you'd like to get your hands on one of these early proofs, fill out the form below to shoot me an email for a chance to own one of the first prints!