Rosetti Lane Collingwood

14 Rosetti Lane, Collingwood

Coffee out the front.
Cameras out the back.

One floor of a 1930s knitting mill, split down the middle. The front half feeds people. The back half photographs them. Tuesday to Sunday, seven till three.

See the menu Hire the studio

The front room at Rosetti Lane in the late afternoon, pendant lights hanging over the tables
The front room, about four o’clock.

01 — How this happened

I spent fourteen years in IT. The last stretch of it as infrastructure manager for a freight company in Laverton, which is a sentence that ends most conversations at parties.

In 2019 they restructured and I wasn’t in the new structure. I bought a second-hand Canon with part of the payout, mostly to have something to do on Tuesdays. Friends asked me to shoot things. Then friends of friends did.

The lease on this floor came up late in 2021. Old knitting mill, 340 square metres, appalling heating, extraordinary light from about ten in the morning onward. Too big for a studio and too strange for a café, so it became both. The wall down the middle was my one concession to sanity.

Two days a week I still do advisory work for other hospitality operators, because somebody has to tell them to stop running the EFTPOS terminal off the guest wifi.

Thea Marinos

Thea Marinos standing in the front room
Thea Marinos. Photographed by someone else, obviously.

02 — Three things happen here

The cafe room, white walls and a hand-written menu board

The café

Tuesday to Sunday, 7am to 3pm. Coffee roasted four kilometres away in Brunswick. Bread from a bakery in Thornbury that has asked not to be named, because they can’t take on any more wholesale.

Read the menu
The studio end of the floor, bare concrete and a stool against a wall

The studio

Ninety square metres, north-facing windows down one side, four metre ceiling. Hire it by the half day and shoot it yourself, or book me and I’ll do it for you.

Rates and portfolio
A notebook and keyboard on a wooden desk

The advisory work

Point of sale, bookings, rosters and networks, for small hospitality businesses that can’t justify a full-time IT person and shouldn’t have to.

What that involves

05 — Ask the counter

Tell it what you’re after

A budget, a restriction, a mood — type it in and this reads the menu for you. It’s the same thing running on the iPad by the till, built because I got tired of being asked, twelve times a morning, what’s gluten free.

06 — The back half

The studio

Ninety square metres of the floor, north-facing windows down the long side, four metre ceiling — which is the entire reason I signed a five year lease on a building with no heating.

Hire it and shoot it yourself, or book me. Most weeks it’s both.

A couple sitting on a park bench at golden hour
Anna and Pete, Edinburgh Gardens
Two hands held together, casting a shadow on grass
The shadow was an accident
A newborn asleep in a striped hat
Ilias, four days old
A woman writing on a whiteboard in an office
Team portraits for a firm in Cremorne
Hands sorting through a pile of black and white prints
Editing, which is most of it
A boutonniere being pinned to a suit jacket
Ten minutes before, always
A man holding a baby
Sam and Rosa, at home in Preston
Camera bodies and lenses laid out on a dark surface
Packed the night before, every time

Hire the room

  • Half day, four hours220
  • Full day, eight hours380
  • Second strobe head40

Included: two Profoto B10s, a 1.5m octabox, a strip box, white, grey and black paper, a tethering bench and a kettle. Not included: an assistant, or my opinion, unless you ask for it.

Book me instead

  • Newborn, in studio, two hours450
  • Family, studio or on location380
  • Headshots, per person, minimum three180
  • Weddings, from2,900

I take twelve weddings a year and no more. If the date has gone, I will say so in the first reply rather than the fourth.

07 — The other two days

Technology advice for people who did not want to think about technology

Before this I ran infrastructure for a freight company. The skills transferred better than I expected, largely because hospitality technology is where good ideas go to be implemented badly.

I take four clients at a time. When it is four, it is four, and I will tell you honestly if there is a wait rather than stretching myself across a fifth.

  • A point of sale and payments review. What you pay, what you are paying it for, and what happens when the internet drops out at 9am on a Saturday.
  • Bookings and rosters. Choosing the system, moving to it, and getting the floor staff to actually use it, which is the hard part and nobody quotes for it.
  • Networks. Get the till off the guest wifi. This is most of the job. It should not be.
  • A second opinion before you sign anything with a three year term and an early exit fee.

$1,400 a day, or $2,200 a month on retainer, which works out to roughly a day and a half. No lock-in. Thirty days notice either way.

09 — Finding us

Visit

14 Rosetti Lane
Collingwood VIC 3066
Tuesday to Sunday
7:00 – 15:00
Monday
Closed
Studio
By appointment

(03) 9417 2286
hello@rosettilane.org

The lane runs off Wellington Street, between the tyre place and the church. Look for a roller door with no sign on it. That is us. The sign has been on order since 2022.

Tram 86 down Smith Street, get off near Johnston, then a few minutes on foot. Parking on Wellington is two hour and they do check.

No bookings for groups under six. For six or more, ring — do not email, I do not read it during service.

Two people sitting by the window at the front of the cafe
The window seats go first. They always go first.