Downtown Provo recently welcomed a new store for visitors to develop their film and photography skills.
Located on the southeast corner of Center Street and Freedom Boulevard, The FIND Lab’s Analog Community Center opened in June 2024 and offers workshops, a studio space, a darkroom, cameras and more.
“This is a place where I’m going to hopefully help get rid of the barrier to entry to photography and/or creativity,” The FIND Lab owner Jonathan Canlas said.
The first FIND Lab location in Orem opened in 2011, developing and scanning film mailed from across the world. However, the new Analog Community Center in Provo is instead meant to involve and educate the community.
Canlas said they even give feedback to those who send film to them, helping aspiring photographers improve.
The store offers workshops as well, teaching visitors how to develop film, shoot film and use a darkroom.
“We basically introduce you into the darkroom where we can show you how to bring your black and white negatives, put them into an enlarger, project it down onto paper, put it through chemistry and how to make ten prints in an hour,” Canlas said.
Their bookshelf contains 25 years’ worth of educational books about film and photography that are not for sale. Instead, Canlas wanted these books to be available for anyone to come in and read them in store.
“We really care about each other’s’ well-beings and our creative passions, whether that’s photography or pottery or sculpture,” Harrison Trinca, a manager of the Analog Community Center, said about his co-workers at The FIND Lab. “This community goes beyond just film.”
The Analog Community Center still has room to expand. Canlas hopes to turn the unused space in the back into a place for live music shows, goth proms, movie nights and more.
“You could walk in and know nothing, and I can literally put something in your hands, and I see that spark and I know that I had with photography,” Canlas said.
Visitors can rent studio spaces and the darkroom from the Analog Community Center website. Rentals are cheaper for those with a valid student ID.
The store is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.