“I’m a lawyer by profession, and a wet plate photographer by passion.
I started my adventure in wet plate by taking a tutorial from Eric Mertens, an accomplished wet plate and daguerreotype photographer. You can find out more about Eric via this URL: http://www.thedaglab.com/
Since I started, I’ve used Mark Osterman’s “The Wet Plate Process, A Working Guide.” Mark is a veteran instructor and a process historian at the George Eastman House, and his guide has been invaluable to me. You can find more about Mark and his partner France Scully’s work via this URL: http://www.collodion.org/
The wet plate, aka collodion, photographic process dates from 1851, having been invented by Frederick Scott Archer, an English sculptor. Archer did not seek a patent on his process, and in fact “died in extreme poverty.” An obituary described him as “a very inconspicuous gentleman, in poor health.”
There are two “types” of wet plate photography — ambrotype and tintype. An ambrotype, which was described by Archer, is based on glass, and a tintype is based on metal. Each type has advantages. The ambrotype can be developed as a negative, and prints made from it. For this reason, it was (and is) the favorite of professional photographers looking to sell prints (historically, albumen prints), for example as cabinet cards, made from the negatives. The advantage of the tintype is that it is cheaper to produce and it is durable (ie, in comparison, the glass plates can easily shatter).
All of the images on this site are tintypes — a piece of blackened aluminum over which the image is created in silver, and over which a varnish is placed to protect the fragile image from physical harm (eg, scratches) and tarnishing (changes to the silver due to exposure to chemicals found in the environment).
With the advent of digital photography, and the relative demise of film photography, wet plate photography (and other alternative processes) has experienced somewhat of a renaissance. The practitioner is able to mix his or her own chemicals and use them in a “wet plate” camera, i.e., a view camera with a purpose built back for the “wet plate” as opposed to the sheet of dry film.
I have two cameras. I half-plate box-style camera (made by Ty Guillory), and an 8×10 bellows-style camera (made by Black Art Woodcraft). I use primarily “period” lenses, manufactured by Dallmeyer, and Ross (no relation).
Thank you for looking.”
EdRoss
