Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Ottke.
Hi Adam, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
There’s another Voyage LA interview from over 5 years ago for a business that became the parent company for LA Film Lab, Film Objektiv. A lot has changed since then, but that small film camera rental company helped me get my foot in the door (in no small part thanks to Phillip Tang’s amazing eye and social media work, which put us on the map) when Brooklyn Film Camera owner Kyle Depew was selling NYC Film Lab during the pandemic. I promise this connects, but that’s where it all started: with NYC Film Lab.
Kyle was running the new lab out of a second unit in a co-working space next to his other business with one employee doing everything at the lab (that person, Mitchell Jackson, has been our ride-or-die manager for the last 4 years). Kyle and I didn’t speak about the reasons for the sale directly, but I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say he had better things to be doing (i.e. running his wildly popular all-things-Polaroid Brooklyn Film Camera) than to be starting a new lab in New York during the pandemic. In hindsight, this was a great time to move into the industry, especially compared to the preceding decade of the paradigm downshift that was the film industry for one hell of a long winter. But you have to remember, this was probably at the most uncertain of times during the pandemic before we understood the concept of a second wave, let alone a third or fourth or whatever we’re on now.
In fact, my fiancée (now wife) and I had been dating 12 years and were due to get married. It was our wedding money she let me use to buy the lab once we realized we weren’t going to get to have a wedding anytime soon. We eventually ended up saving enough again and having that wedding in Tuscany just before the end of our 14th year together. It all comes full circle because I’m going back to the exact same spot later this year to celebrate Mitch, my NYC Film Lab manager, and his partner’s wedding. The two of them were at our wedding and I guess loved it so much they’re doing the exact same thing…wild. But I have to say it was pretty good.
Anyway, fast-forward four years, and NYC Film Lab has been doing well in a new location in Bushwick while in the middle of expanding to a second location in Williamsburg (we open in a few weeks! And yes, coffee will be coming, since you asked in your head). I still had this dream of opening LA Film Lab, but it was on the back burner until my wife told me at the end of 2023 we’re having a baby. I told her I realistically won’t do an LA lab for at least two years if I don’t do it right then, but that if I start right away, I think we can open before the baby comes. And once again, she said to go for it. We opened in May, and Isabel (Izzy) was born in June.
LA still has work ahead of it, but we’re firing on all cylinders, and as soon as we are done improving our internal processes with boring stuff like a new custom site, we are going to shift to really try and make the place somewhere people want to be even more. That’s still going to require a bit more time and money, but this will be the year it really blossoms. We have the space for it. And we have the people for it (come say Hi to our salt-of-the-earth manager, Trevor, along with Michael and Mitzi). Soon enough, a darkroom, coffee, and more.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s never a smooth road. You always think you brace yourself for the extra time and money life will take from you. But you’d never do it if you really knew what would happen along the way. Thankfully it’s always better in hindsight because it gets better in the future as long as you keep going every day.
As much as it’s nice to romanticize the art of the lab, it’s still a business that has to sustain itself. Cash flow is important, and making sure I can pay our 10-15 employees across both labs every month is key. If I need to be able to count on them, they need to be able to count on me.
Doing both the new space in New York and the new business entirely in LA has been a chore, needless to say (I can hear your “Duhs”). It’s certainly been exacerbated by machines that we ordered and never arrived or arrived broken; ongoing chemistry supply shortages that have us scrambling between all the country’s suppliers; ever-increasing shipping and film prices — you name it (someone even backed into me a couple months ago and drove off; a month later another person hit me from behind in our other car and also drove off. Life is having some fun with me).
The industry is still hamstrung by veteran manufacturers and distributors that haven’t modernized too much. Many are still mom-and-pop businesses with all the same [dis]organization skills they had in the 60s. If people think the bureaucracy of government is bad, I’d be happy to remind them of all the little private bureaucracies in our lives we never really talk about, but deal with every day. Landlords can be SLOW. Just to take New York for example, we signed the lease for the second location in October of 2023. We are finally opening the space this month (we’ll have a soft opening celebration late Winter and a grand opening in the spring/early summer).
So yes, we’ve had struggles along the way. But we don’t complain about them (I’m not sure the sarcasm is coming out right).
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We have one goal across the entire spectrum of services we offer: get more people to shoot more film. We do that by improving the QCD triangle (quality/cost/delivery) with respect to any part of the film-shooting experience. The idea that you have to sacrifice one to improve another is a bit of a fallacy. Critical and creative thinking help us break or “beat” that triangle. But that’s what we do every day in a million tiny ways. Whatever we can do to save a penny, a second, or the smallest torn edge of an otherwise great experience, we do it.
We start by offering every service we can. We have some work to do on the large format side here in LA (8×10 coming soon), but we offer every major process including C-41, B&W, E-6, and ECN-2. Meanwhile, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes decisions that play out in delivering a better product. For example, many places offer a “small” JPEG. This “small” size from these early 2000s scanners is nothing more than a glorified thumbnail. And you’re putting this $20,000 scanner through identical wear and tear only to ask it to spit out a ridiculously small file that is not too relevant today, even on Instagram — it doesn’t make sense.
So we simplify our offerings to two options: 1.) A JPEG that’s big enough for anything online or up to 8×10 prints and, 2.) The highest-resolution 16-bit color TIFF file we can produce from that scanner. If people want to get really fancy, we can do a 100 MP capture from our medium format camera setup. But so many people don’t keep their negatives these days (keep your negatives, people!) that we at least want to provide customers with a VERY usable file at the minimum. Some don’t know what scans to ask for. So this kind of decision-making provides real value to customers.
Service-wise, we’re aiming to do it all. We offer affordable minilab prints as well as exquisite archival, fine art prints. We do consignment and film sales. We are currently building out a great B2B component, too. And we will soon add a darkroom and a small coffee component.
Also, FO Studio is right next to us in the space. It’s the only place I know where you can shoot film (no shame for digital shooters, either, of course!), hand it over the counter to our techs, and have scans up on a color-calibrated monitor for review by your art director in about 15 minutes, virtually replicating nearly the same instant feedback you’d get on a digital set so you know if you have what your brand needs before you wrap models, crews, etc. For everyone else, there is still a 12′ moveable cyc wall, over 20-foot-high ceilings, motorized backdrops, included Profoto lights and modifiers, and more.
This year should bring a lot more events and community engagement, too. We have some great stuff planned and are always open to more ideas. Anything that helps us spread the joy of film photography or photography as a whole is welcome.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
LA is incredible. They say LA hasn’t been able to make a magazine work here because of the diversity and variation between all its neighborhoods. West LA and East LA want to visit each other, but don’t want to read about each other. Even briefly acting as though the conversation can be simplified down to East vs. West or that you can distill a swath like “West LA” into a single area is sacrilege. Do we mean Palisades or Culver City? Santa Monica wouldn’t even want to identify with either. And don’t get me started on Venice. LA can’t even agree on a single sports team for ANY of the major sports. The only thing that unites us is that we are so different. It’s true and it’s beautiful. And the FOOD. Enough said.
I don’t want to end on a negative note, but man…what do I like the least? The posers. LA has them in spades. Fitting for a city of dreams. But that’s the thing. It’s gorgeous to have a dream. Please come here and be a dreamer. But be real. History and fans reward the ones that truly share themselves and not some vision of what they think others want them to be. That ability to share yourself openly is the real talent in this life. Dream, come to LA, find yourself, get comfortable being that person, let loose, and share it with us.
Pricing:
- Processing from $9
- Process and Scan from $16
- Prints from $12.75/roll
- Two-Week Camera Rentals from $30
- Studio Rental from $60
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lafilmlab.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/lafilmlab
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/la-film-lab-los-angeles
- Other: https://filmobjektiv.org
