Stephen Zane spends a lot of his waking hours working. Every day except Sunday, the bespectacled founder of Coastal Film Lab is surrounded by a handful of the shop’s dozen employees. On five of those days, customers buzz in, out, and around the store getting immersed in the world of cameras and film as they peruse the display cases and observe a hybrid workflow that turns light on celluloid into a digital folder of images. The 29-year-old, who founded Coastal as a passion project in 2016, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that he simply helps his talented staff out, filling in gaps here and there—and then looks ahead.
“I’m trying to figure out whatever next new thing we’re thinking about doing and seeing how viable that is,” he said. “So I mostly just kind of learn all day, every day, which is fun, if exhausting,” he added.
His team at Coastal already has a lot of things figured out, apparently.
The shop—now located at 1704 N Nebraska Ave. in Tampa—opened in mid-2021 and is more like a hub for photography. Approximately 60-70 customers come through the doors each day. Most have spent film in their hands. Together with mail-in orders, Coastal develops and scans about 500 rolls of film from across the U.S. each week. But Zane, who initially wanted to be a photojournalist before realizing that decently-paying jobs in that field are few and far between, doesn’t even care if someone spends any money should they stop by.
“I mean, it helps because it keeps the lights on, but you can just come and get excited, and that’s fine,” he added. “Because I’ll just send you out in the world again, like, ‘Alright, go and take photos.’”
That welcoming attitude and warmth is a hallmark of the Coastal experience. This isn’t the kind of shop where staffers look down on customers. In fact, it’s customers that kind of stare at them, thanks to an open lab format.
“The idea of this is to show everyone that comes in what the process of this is, and to have this level of transparency and honesty that is instantly educating every person that comes in as to what we’re doing,” Zane added.
In the lab alongside developing machines from the ‘90s and early-2000s are scanners that are anywhere from 15-20 years old, running Windows XP and Windows 2000. There’s also a processor that lets Coastal handle movie film and slide film, too.
“This is kind of a niche thing, and I want it to succeed, and for it to succeed, people have to be excited about it. For people to be excited about it, they have to understand it,” Zane explained.
It’s easy to dive in at Coastal.
The staff itself is young, with ages ranging from 21-34 years old. Its cast includes Alex Vicente, a boy wonder who can not only fix cameras deemed unrepairable by other shops, but also probably get your car running again (he did it for a customer once). Zane is pushing him to create a signature camera for Coastal.
Maycee Padoll helps the shop connect with customers who want to archive and organize old tapes, prints and negatives. Then there’s Shelby Hazelton, a customer-turned-employee, who now handles marketing and graphic design for Coastal. She wanted to get into film to capture her first year of marriage on the medium, but ended up just focusing on tiny moments that were cute or felt like they mattered.
“I came here to buy film, look at more cameras, ask them questions, get into it—and I just like the vibe here so much. I love the people,” Hazelton told CL, with her dog Tulip at her side. “I never had co-workers before, so I was also very lonely. I just wanted people to talk to you, which is crazy, because I love talking to people.”
That tribe will undoubtedly keep growing at Coastal.
The motion picture industry is the main consumer of film, so it’s not going anywhere, Zane explained, conceding that his shop’s challenge will be to keep old cameras running alongside maintaining the high volume processing equipment which always needs new parts.
“At some point somebody’s gonna have to come out with new scanners and new processors because these ones will have just hit end of life,” Zane said. “With ours, what we’d probably end up doing is cannibalizing our machines and building our own with parts from the existing ones—but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
What the Coastal team is focused on right now is a fourth birthday party happening this Friday with food, drinks, an analog photo booth, and more. Portfolio reviews may be on the horizon, Zane said, but the community events are a chance for him to take stock, be together, and take a break from the grind.
And at the end of the day, Zane—who used to be kind of a solopreneur type, trying to do it all himself—is really just thrilled to be surrounded by such a good group of people who’ve chosen to spend so much time at Coastal Film Lab with him. Asking others to help him in the endeavour has been a humbling process and a good lesson to learn. Zane may be the bandleader, and sometimes obsessive-compulsive driver, but the ship is run by the team.
“I don’t necessarily feel like they’re working for me. They’re working for the lab, which is like an entity that exists outside of me,” he said. “I’m just so excited that they all have chosen to spend their lives here. It’s really fun.”
