Blog #3 - A Shelf of Cameras and a Bit of Headspace

Until recently, our spare downstairs room (previously a dining room, pre-child) had one purpose: act as a glorified toy overflow. It was technically Bow’s playroom, but in practice, it was more of a storage depot. Toys lived there, yes but played with? Not really. Bow would nip in, grab something, and then vanish into another part of the house to actually use it generally wherever me and Emma were. It became one of those rooms where you’d open the door, sigh, and try not to trip over a plastic pony or rogue Donald Duck car.

And then one of us, I genuinely can’t remember who, suggested doing something else with it. Something better. Something we’d all actually use.

The idea was simple: turn the room into a family hobby space. One room, three corners, three different passions. Nothing fancy, no big builds or wild Pinterest mood boards, just a space where we could all spend time doing the things we enjoy without being in separate rooms or waiting for quiet moments that never really come.

So, we started clearing it out. Bagged up a lot of forgotten toys (some relocated, some retired), scrubbed the floor, and gave the walls a new coat of paint. We all got involved, Bow included. We were covered in emulsion specks, hands full of Allen keys and screwdrivers. Emma led the flatpack charge, I played furniture logistics manager, and Bow, armed with a power drill, officially became the youngest member of the build crew. Turns out she's quite handy when it comes to assembling desks.

By the end of the weekend, we had something new. Not just a room, but a space that felt like it belonged to all of us.

Emma’s desk is now home to her sewing machines, reels of thread, patterns, and the growing number of half-finished projects that seem to multiply on their own. Bow’s side has puzzles, writing books, maths practice sheets, and a seemingly bottomless stash of colouring pens.

And me? I’ve got a corner that looks… well, exactly how you'd expect.

On the shelves: rows of old cameras. Some pristine, some crusty with age and unknown histories. There’s a whole section of lenses, some stacked neatly, others threatening to roll off and test their durability. There’s a drone perched amongst it all like it’s silently judging the analog crowd. In the middle sits Bow’s Sony NEX-5R, proudly displayed like a family heirloom-in-training. A camera with zero resale value and infinite sentimental weight.

Below that shelf is my workspace, just a simple desk setup: MacBook Pro, a 24-inch monitor, and a bright blue silicone mat that’s already stained with grease and mystery residue from cameras I’ve started dismantling “just to see.” There’s a pot of cotton buds, a little bottle of isopropyl, a scattering of tools, and a few cameras currently in bits. Whether they’ll go back together is another story entirely.

This desk isn’t just for display, it’s for actual tinkering. Cleaning, stripping down, testing old gear. Some cameras might get brought back to life. Some might just be cleaned up and shelved with honour. And others… well, others might donate a few parts and call it a day. It’s all part of the fun.

Lately, I’ve even started thinking about setting up for home film development. It’s not something I’ve ever tried before, but there’s something appealing about closing the loop with shooting, developing, and scanning all under one roof. I don’t know where that side of things will go yet. But for the first time, I have a space where that kind of project feels possible.

Even more important than the setup itself is what the space represents. It’s not a studio, or a darkroom, or a man-cave (though I did joke about that once and Emma gave me a look). It’s a shared family space. A calm corner. A “third space.”

We all spend our lives moving between responsibilities such as work, school runs, laundry, emails, dinner, repeat. There’s not always room in that cycle for creativity, or focus, or just… being still while doing something that’s purely yours. So having a physical place where your hobby can live? Even if it’s just a shelf, or a laptop on the sofa, or a kitchen table cleared for 20 minutes, it matters.

There’s a quiet kind of psychological reset that happens when you step into a space that’s just for your passion. For me, that’s brushing dust off an old soviet Zenit and trying to remember where I last put the 1.5V battery adapter. For Emma, it’s the rhythm of the sewing machine. For Bow, it’s telling a story out loud while she writes it down in coloured pencil. And somehow, all three things can happen in the same room without anyone needing to say, “Shhh.”

We don’t really talk about it explicitly, but both Emma and I know that making time and space for our hobbies has helped in other ways too. Mentally. Emotionally. Life gets heavy sometimes with jobs, parenting, relationships, the general noise of everything. We’ve both had our seasons of stress and burnout. So this hobby room, with all its clutter and cables and paper scraps, is also something softer underneath. A place where we look after our minds while pretending we’re just looking after our hobbies.

It’s early days still. The camera collection is growing faster than I can test things. The sewing stash is expanding like it’s self-replicating. And Bow’s projects are becoming more complex (we’re currently doing science experiments with magnets!) But for the first time in a long while, we’ve got a space where our passions can stretch out a bit.

And I genuinely recommend it. Find a nook, a corner, a fold-down table. Make it yours. It doesn’t have to be Instagram-worthy. It doesn’t need LED lighting or matching containers. Just somewhere to exhale a bit. Somewhere to fiddle with an old camera, or pin a bit of fabric, or write a story about a cat that drives a spaceship.

This isn’t the final version of my little photography corner. There’ll be changes. New shelves. Maybe a scanner. Maybe a few light leaks, some trial-and-error disasters, and at least one camera I accidentally break mid-clean. But it’s my space. Shared with the people I love. And somehow, that makes it feel more complete.

It’s just a shelf of cameras.

But it’s also a bit of headspace.