(Image: @zackporchlight)
It has been more than a decade since 60 Minute Photo, the last dedicated photo shop on Capitol Hill, wound up its final roll and made way for demolition and redevelopment on 14th Ave. One of the businesses that survived that 14th Ave change has added a new element that might be of interest to neighborhood shutterbugs.
There is now a new Moody’s Film Lab drop box inside the street’s Porchlight Coffee and Records shop. The box joins a collection point at Sonic Boom in Ballard as the brand new photographer-run company’s first as it grows a boutique drop-off and by-mail film development, printing, and more business in Seattle.
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For Porchight, the drop-box installed at the end of the vinyl bins just past V-W-X-Y-Z is an echo of the block’s past when 60 Minute Photo’s business wasn’t viable enough to justify the expense of finding a new location during years of construction on a new mixed-use building on the block that would preserve the auto row-era building the photo shop and Porchlight called home. Construction began in 2013 with Porchlight moving around the corner in the interim but 60 Minute closing for good. Today, the REO Flats apartment building rises above the restored and rebuilt auto row facade.
Torn down in 2013
Meanwhile, film photography has survived. Around Capitol Hill, in addition to the big chain drug stores that still offer drop-off service, photographers can get their work developed at 10th Ave’s Pound Arts or 12th Ave’s Photographic Center Northwest, where, yes, there is also a story of re-development. The Center is slated to be part of a new mixed-use project to rise at the corner with more than a hundred new apartments above a new 10,000-square-foot photography and learning center.
For now, film development-focused efforts like Moody’s will have to make do with drop-boxes but more could be coming. If there is now a Ballard Film & Foto, can a Capitol Hill Film & Foto be far behind?
You can learn more about Moody’s Film Lab at moodysfilm.com.
Porchlight Coffee and Records is located at 1517 14th Ave. Learn more at porchlightcoffee.com.