Wet Plate Collodion Archives

Cloud Nine Fire Show Tintypes

Blog / Portrait / Tintype / Wet Plate Collodion

Just a random Saturday night in Wisconsin - with tintype portraits of fire artists! Cloud Nine Fire Show is a Wisconsin based troupe of talented performers specializing in the art of flow. We've worked together earlier this Summer to capture the art of flow in the historic tintype process - see our first plates at Cloud Nine Tintypes. Unfortunately, your humble alchemist was unable to to capture the fire in the plates. So like the Alchemists of old, when confronted with failure it is back to the lab and the library in the sub basement for research. The findings were…

Real Images for Real People

Blog / Wet Plate Collodion

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.' – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know John Keats Veracity is the quality of being true, honest, or accurate. Photography was developed with the idea of capturing and preserving some scene in the real world. The deviations from reality were technical - mainly lens distortions and the limitations of chemistry. Unfortunately now we are bombarded with digital images that are at best doctored and at worst totally generated by AI computer systems. Sun and Silver.photo is dedicated to the thought that there is a place in the world…

Ambrotypes with Nataly

Ambrotype / Blog / Portrait / Wet Plate Collodion

July is a perfect time to do Ambrotypes with Nataly. This was the first time I fully utilized the real estate of my 12x12 Primer camera and made 12 inch by 12 inch glass plate. Silver collodion on glass is also know as an Ambrotype. It doesn't sound like a big change going from an 8x10 inch image to a 12x12 inch image but the 12x12 is actually 80% bigger. That means 80% more chemical and 80% more area to cover evenly with collodion. It also means 80% more to cover with developer as quickly as possible. So.. how did…

Romantic Couple Portraits – Victorian Tintype Photography

Ambrotype / Blog / Wedding / Wet Plate Collodion

It was a dark and rainy day when we met for portraits. We still managed to create some romantic portraits using Victorian photography methods. The plate above was taken on glass. The glass is treated with collodion and silver and inserted into my camera to produce the image. Moody, dreamy, romantic are all good descriptions of the style. A photo on the internet does not come close to showing the depth and almost three dimensional quality of the image. Our second glass plate is much more dreamy and moody from the loss of light as a storm cloud passed. Yet,…

Pop Up – Heritage Makers Market

Blog / Tintype / Wet Plate Collodion

As the weather finally turns colder my time opens up and I can catch up on posting. There were hundreds of traveling tintype photographers back in the Victorian era. They would travel around the country and would "pop up" at events like Fairs and Festivals. That tradition is still alive, although now there are maybe only a dozen or two tintype photographers actively traveling and doing tintype pop ups or events. I love doing tintype pop ups because I get the chance to meet and create images with so many people in a short time. Tons of work and hectic…

Vintage or Modern Lens for Wet Plate?

Blog / Tutorial / Wet Plate Collodion

One of the advantages of doing historic Victorian photography is there are so many great lenses around to choose from. I can choose a vintage or modern lens for wet plate photographs. By "vintage" I mean something 100 years old or older - a lens that could have been used for wet plate photography when it was new. "Modern" means something from the early to mid 1900's (so only 50 to around 100 years old). The choice of a vintage or modern lens for wet plate is for me more of an artistic choice than a technical one. Although there…

Tuesday in The Park

Blog / Portrait / Tintype / Wet Plate Collodion

It was Tintype Tuesday in the Park. The weather, and the light, was variable. Cloudy to sunny to partly sunny and back to clouds! Rain all morning but we managed to get a window of dryness. They say "the show must go on" so we worked through the continuously variable light. Smith Park, Menasha, was the location and Victorian era costumes were the order of the day - a perfect fit with Victorian era photography! After the more formal portraits we switched it up. You know the party is starting when the bag of stuffed Paddington Bears is opened up!…

Victorian Photo Safari

Blog / Tintype / Wet Plate Collodion

Out on safari in Fond du Lac yesterday. Making 8x10 tintypes and having the time of my life. The mobile darkroom is working well and close to being set up the way I want. It is so nice to have a good work space that I can take around wherever my travels take me. Check out more on my Mobile Darkroom So, you might ask, why do I use the terms "Victorian" and "safari"? Well Victorian is pretty easy. It refers to the years 1837 to 1901 during Queen Victoria's reign. These years correspond well with the birth of photography…

Is it live or is it…

Blog / Wet Plate Collodion

There was a series of commercials from back when my age was a single digital. They were for Memorex cassette tape and my favorite featured Ella Fitzgerald breaking a wine glass with her voice. They showed Ella doing the glass break live and then they broke another glass with a tape recording of her voice. So the message was you don't need Ella Fitzgerald, all you need is a tape recording of Ella Fitzgerald. Fast forward to today and we see computers making pictures using algorithms deceptively called "AI". The implication is you don't need real photographs because you can…

Behind The Scenes of Wet Plate Collodion Photography

Ambrotype / Blog / Tintype / Wet Plate Collodion

Why does a wet plate cost so much? A question I sometimes get, although not too often. Part of the cost is the part my clients see - the actual image capture. But the session is actually the smallest part of making historic tintypes and Ambrotypes. So let's go behind the scenes of wet plate collodion photography and see some of the work that goes into making your historic image. Chemical Preparation The foundation of the process is chemistry. Before anything else happens there are a bunch of chemicals that have to be purchased and mixed. Collodion has to be…

Tintype Principles for a New Year

Blog / Tintype / Wet Plate Collodion

Tintype principles for a new year. I had so much fun in 2023 making 19th century photography - tintypes, Ambrotypes, salt prints and cyanotypes. I think 2024 is going to be an amazing year. Often people choose New Years Day for resolutions but I would rather talk about core beliefs or principles. Resolutions are usually a set of "do" or "don't do" activities. Lose weight, exercise more, make more portraits are just a few examples. So instead of a list of things to do, or things to change, in the coming year I would rather reinforce the "whys" of what I am…

2023 Year in Review

Blog / Cyanotype / Salt Print / Wet Plate Collodion

What a year we've had at Sun and Silver.photo! The mobile darkroom was finished by Spring and operational all Summer. We did a lot of location shoots over the Summer. Last year I shut down for the Winter as the cold weather makes the chemistry not work as well. But this year I added a small heater to the darkroom and will be trying to keep making tintypes all through the Winter (at least when it is not too horribly cold). I also did a lot of cyanotype and salt prints this year and sold a lot of them at…