My darkroom

My Darkroom is in the basement of the house my friends and I are renting, it occasionally floods after a rainstorm. The set up cost was about 50 USD. The light proofing comes from tinfoil on the windows, and the 'walls' of the darkroom are 3mil contractor plastic. The basement is super gross so after I hung the plastic I cleaned the floor with a vengeance.

[not pictured] is my ventilation. Its a box fan mounted on one end of a cardboard box, and a furnace filter mounted on the other end. It blows air into the room hopefully blowing dust out. It works pretty good, but in an ideal room I'd have an out vent over my work table.




Here is my work surface. Every once and a while it gets cleaned off/ a new plastic sheet. The shelf was about 10$ from home depot. Lots of stuff on the shelves not labeled like my glass stirring rods, calibrated 10ml pipets (a godsend! I hate drop counts) My hake brushs, vinyl gloves (I prefer nitrate but ran out) and some equipment storage below the table in a rubbermaid tub.




This is the reverse wall to my work table. This is where I keep (most) of the wet chemicals, as well at watercolor tubes for gum bichromate. Some other misc gear such as my plate drying rack and leveling table (for cooling/setting up of dry plates). You can also see some drying racks (thanks ikea) and a small pile of prints. Somehow my prints manage to infultrate every room of the house . Also there is my box of glass which i've been collecting from my friends at a frame shop. They throw out so much glass that can be resized to 4x5, 5x7,8x10 because they always have more than they'll ever need.




And finally my UV box and flat file. My last job was throwing it away after it got crushed by some gaterboard . Just needed to be reassembled with some screws and glue. The thing was stapled together!

The UV box averages 40 min cyanotypes and 12 min gum bichromate. Its still a work in process, the stupid tube socket's keep melting despite being rated for the amount of juice the tubes draw. Just been a near fire.. thats all.

Also, check out the lightproofing!


I hope this inspires some people to use less than ideal places for their darkroom.