We are two friends from North London with a love of all things film. And we're desperate to find more like-minded people to share it with!
So rather than join a club, or join a sports team, we're on a madcap journey to build our own film lab, community and members space. For film enthusiasts by film enthusiasts. Follow along with our adventure on our blog & socials!
After discovering his dad’s old film SLR, Aaron took it with him when he went to uni and fell in love with ‘the film look’. Without knowing it, what he really meant was the grain, the imperfection and stories you can tell with film.
The endless jibes he endured for being a film nerd weren’t enough to stop him from buying every camera, scanner, enlarger under the sun. Even running a giant Jobo hand-processor from his bedroom (apologies to his longsuffering partner Lou for that one)
The jokes dried up shortly after Aaron let James borrow his beloved Yashica T4 in 2017 (they were cheaper then…). Soon, James too was tumbling down the rabbit hole.
* Here's the first analogue photo (of his sister and now husband!) that James ever took!
After years of travelling, hanging out and shooting film together, Aaron and James were itching to find more people to join up with. But in a big city like London, finding community and place is hard. They thought "wouldn't it be great to have a place where we can hang out, shoot film, meet other people and work on projects together?"
And that was the genesis of Negative Space.
Like all great ideas, it started out after James & Aaron had had one too many at the World’s End pub in Finsbury Park. Aaron was in despair as he regaled his desperate attempts to run an old Pakon film scanner.
And when it was James' turn to buy a round, his attempts to hide in the bathroom became more conspicuous. He'd just spent £18 on low-res scans at a well-known, yellow high-street lab (you know the one)...
Over more pints, and more research, the idea flowered. We realised that there were tonnes of people out there like us. People who loved film but struggled with ancient gear at home, were sick of price gouging by poor-quality high street chains, and slowly filling up their partners' back room with more "classic analogue gear bought for a song on ebay!" (crap)
