There is a resurgence of B&W darkroom photography. Surprisingly, it's not among the older generation(s) that have done it before, but among those who have grown up knowing only digital. It's the old tech (which is now a couple generations old, so it's desirable again) that attracts many.
 
Darkrooms can be set up very inexpensively (people will give you everything), and the choice in materials is very good--with almost everything on the market being top-notch quality. You don't have to get fancy with a darkroom--I wrote about setting one up in the utility closet! It is easy to do and learn--especially if you have a mentor.
 
The attitude among the "wireless" (used to be "wired") generation is that they use electronic devices and computers all day long in their work and lives. Why would they want to use the same for artistic purposes when everybody and their dog is doing exactly the same thing?  "Oooo, look--another piece of Photoshop 'art'".
 
I've shared the story before, I'm sure, but I pretty much grew up in the darkroom. I'm sure D76 is coded in my DNA somehow. For about 15 years I eschewed B&W and worked almost exclusively in color and using labs as well as computers to do my editing. I was going digital (with scanned film) by 1990. Getting back into B&W was actually a weird event in 2000 that was kinda inadvertent. Four years ago I decided to get out of the B&W darkroom and dedicate myself to digital. Then a funny thing happened. When I decommissioned the darkroom, I immediately recognized that as an error. We bought a condo with no space for a darkroom thinking that it was behind me. Not! For the past year we've been looking for another place that does have space for my darkroom again.
 
It's an old saw by now, but Digital Photography is to Film Photography what Film Photography is to Painting. Some people think that one has replaced the other--and for the general masses that is true, but for the artist, each medium has specific reasons for being. Painting hasn't ceased and will never cease. Film Photography is also an art which may adapt to changing materials, but will always exist in some form. Digital Photography is the "current norm", but someday it will be replaced by something else for the masses. I vaguely remember the '80s where video was going to replace photography...
 
The question each of us needs to ask ourselves is this: "Am I going to be just one of the masses or am I going to be different?" True artists are different--they carve their own way forward. What we see on Flickr is an abomination. Somebody will create something "original" and within 48 hours there will be 2000 copies of that image. One person came up with the concept and 2000 people immediately copied, perfected and displayed the result as their own. Frankly, we're better off carving out pages from a magazine, framing them and hanging them on the wall.
 
Digital Photography has made it easy for everybody to kind of homogenise our photography. HDR? Over The Top Saturation? Bed-spread sized prints? None of that is special. Even B&W photography has been cheapened by people who think that desaturating and cranking up the contrast is B&W photography. End result is the usual yawner garbage. I'm not slamming Digital Photography, though, because every technological advancement in photography has brought out the copycats and wannabees. Nothing new here, and I'm as good at copycatting as the next. (All wedding/portrait photographers are plagiarists).
 
If your market is selling prints in an art show setting, you might want to try selling hand-crafted Silver-Gelatin prints in smaller sizes. When EVERYBODY else is selling rug-prints, you stand out with a different product which the true collector recognizes as special. Of course, it's got to be good--you just can't schlock garbage around, but when everywhere you look is fast-food joints, a good steak dinner sounds good.

Ken

I'm planning for a film-only winter outing. The question is what equipment to take, which is compact enough, light enough, yet capable enough of handling long stretches of below freezing temperatures. This OM kit is one possible incarnation.

A while back, I had the "pleasure" of visiting the local camera proprietor in another city while on a business road trip. Had I realized what I was in for, I probably should have not bothered.

No explanation required.

OM-3Ti with Motordrive 2, Zuiko 35-80 F2.8 and T45 Flash.

OM-4T with Motordrive 2 and Zuiko 35mm Shift

Nearly two years a go we moved into a condo which lacked space for a darkroom. I used the garage for the darkroom by setting everything up on my workbench along one wall. The challenge there is light leakage through the cracks in the garage door and the total lack of temperature stability. With winter arriving, this is a serious concern. My plan has been to build a dual-purpose darkroom and tornado shelter in a corner of the garage, but that has yet to materialize.

My battle is not atypical of most photographers wanting to print and process their own B&W prints. Fortunately, in my case I was able to finally figure out a solution...

I've been in hog-heaven shooting Fujichromes again, but I discovered an old curse that has reared its ugly head again.

The Gotcha of the Great!

A good 'chrome, such as Velvia or Kodachrome is expensive to shoot.  The per-shot cost is very high, and when combined with larger-formats, is difficult to justify.  This was true before, and it's even more true today in the world overrun by digital.

This is only one side of the equation, though.  The reason to shoot Velvia or other high-quality 'chrome is for the quality of the images it results in.  You know, for example, how well Velvia enhances colors during the "golden hours"--it takes what is beautiful and extends it into another dimension.

But this comes at a price--not just monetory, but psychological.  You end up not shooting pictures because you are constantly asking yourself: "Is this Velvia-worthy?"  Because of this questioning, you end up NOT taking the picture because you know in your heart that the picture just isn't good enough to commit to a film of this quality. As a result, you miss many photographic opportunities through this "pre-edit" process.

A massive advantage of digital over great film is that you are more likely to take pictures of things that you'd never commit a frame of expensive film to. Granted, nearly all of these pictures are "tossers", but once in a while one of these "also-ran" photographs is a winner.

The key to survival in the film world is to be willing to waste photographs on experimental or secondary pictures. If you can't get beyond the "Gotcha of the Great", then it may pay to have a second camera loaded with low-cost film or even a digital camera.  Save the expensive film for the "I'm making a statement with this photograph". This way, by using dual cameras you won't miss out on the low hanging fruit while you reach for the highest apple.