Build That Wall!

It's been a funny old world at the home of The Online Darkroom this year. You'll obviously have noticed the dearth of posts. Well, it's been matched by a similar dearth in picture taking. I blame it all on our house move in November last year.

For several months before the move I'd been doing less photography and blog posting than normal, mainly because of the work involved in getting our old house looking its best before putting it on sale. The actual move was a lot more disruptive than I'd anticipated. My get-up-and-go, marginal at the best of times, went walkabout, got lost and apparently couldn't find its way back to our new home.

I sort of lost all interest in photography preferring instead to sit around on my fat arse reading political stuff on the iPad. "Creative work" was limited to DIY and painting and decorating. It didn't help that I had no darkroom up and running nor even a computer for scanning purposes. I think I managed to expose two 35mm rolls over about seven months - which I've yet to develop. There were a few false dawns when I thought I was getting the old image-making urge back again but to no avail.

This has, more or less, been the situation for me throughout 2016. Slowly it dawned on me that there was little point in waiting for something to happen: in the words of Captain Kirk's somewhat dodgy successor, I'd have to make it so. That's why I went online on Monday and ordered the timber and plasterboard for the partition wall I need to build to create a darkroom. The supplies should arrive tomorrow and I'll get cracking as soon as possible. Once the wall has been built I'm hoping my enthusiasm will start to return.

For some strange reason, Wickes couldn't deliver the two 3m lengths I need until next week (no problem delivering the 2.4m lengths or plasterboard this week) so I picked them up in the old Saab this morning instead. I was able to select good straight lengths which was just as well as most of the others could have been used to make hockey sticks with very little work. Many were twisted in three dimensions. Does the amount of time I had to spend sorting through them count as a fourth dimensional twist? Choice Canadian kiln-dried lumber my bottom: they were like off-cuts from the Corkscrew Hazel section of the local tree nursery.

I also bought some 35mm and 120 Tmax 400, the film I've decided to use to the exclusion of everything else apart from large format materials, to gee myself up a bit. I even sent the Rolleiflex SL66E off to have the tiny piece of metal lodged by the shutter curtains and rendering it useless removed so it's functional now. The Leica and associated lenses remain in need of a good service, though. With the intention of flogging off my two Billingham bags and a couple of other makes I no longer use, I picked up a Domke F-802 on Ebay only to find it has no inserts but it should be easy enough to sort something out there. The Billinghams are lovely but a pain in the neck to use.

So that's where I'm at. Hopefully, I'll start building the wall this week and begin the process of fitting it out next week. I've decided to add a sink - a first for a Robbins darkroom - so the services of a plumber will be required. It's not going to be the largest darkroom ever at about 9x5.5 feet but I'm hoping it will be very usable. I wouldn't say having the use of a darkroom is imminent but it's at least in the foreseeable future.

Oh, and I almost forgot. TRUMP 2016!