A new darkroom and photography workspace will be among the facilities provided by the first phase of the Inverness Creative Academy Project.
Matt Sillars, a photographer and lecturer in photography and culture studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands, and his colleague Rachel Fermi will use the space for the Inverness Darkroom, a community project to support the growing number of photographers across the Highlands who prefer traditional analogue photography to digital.
Courses, workshops and other activities will also link in with Flow Photofest, the biennial international photography festival.
"There’s a real rise in the interest in analogue photography," Mr Sillars said.
"Digital technology has made photography accessible to all but as people find its limits they often want to explore further and discover all the things they can do with the older analogue techniques.
"There’s also a real excitement and ‘magic’ about being in a darkroom environment and making a photograph, using the chemicals and watching the image emerge in front of your eyes.
"People really engage with the physical object and it is quite a different experience from images on a screen."
He believed the darkroom would attract people from a large catchment area, with those living within 50 miles of the city using it regularly, and those within 100 to 150 miles attending for courses and workshops.
"People are often quite dispersed and this will be somewhere they can come together," he said. "It will allow them to bounce ideas off each other and create joint projects
