Just a video showing one of the ways we frame our tintypes. In this case we made a handmade frame out of old pine wood and then use some old scrap metal for the matte and mount. The tintype has magnets added to the back to hold it in place. We love this type of mount as it both shows the entire tintype plate and it also has a wonderful relief with the magnets holding the plate away from the matte. This 6x9 inch tintype was created at the annual Ag Fair in Manitowoc - at Pinecrest Village. It is…

One of the many challenges to Victorian Photography methods is you need a nearby darkroom to do wet plate images. The term "wet plate" is descriptive in that the plate has to be exposed and developed before the collodion coating dries. This requires a darkroom because the plate is light sensitive. In the 1800's photographers carried around a dark box on their carts for work away from their studios. The dark box is still used by many today. I decided to build a darkroom on a trailer. I use it both as a darkroom and as a lab & work…

Wet plate collodion photography is a very do-it-yourself endeavor. We are very much like the original roving photographers of the 1800's because there are no, or limited, commercial sources for much of our suppliers and equipment. Thankfully we don't have to make our own lenses but are limited to lenses made around a century ago. This is because the small number of large format lenses still made incorporate glass and coatings which block the blue and UV light essential for collodion photography. But old lenses often have parts like lens caps missing. So we decided to invest in a 3D…