Getting started in wet-plate collodion

I thought it would be interesting to give you some background information on how I got involved with wet-plate collodion.
As I mentioned in the introduction to the blog, I have known about collodion photography for a while and have loved the aesthetic of it, including all the possible defects and artifacts. However getting started requires a significant investment in terms of equipment and knowledge, and It took me a few months to gather all that was needed.

Now, I have to say that I am doing collodion on a budget, which is reflected in my choice of equipment. My camera is a modern, affordable view camera:

The camera uses modern film holders that needed some modification for wet-plate photography. Collodion is typically done on glass (ambrotypes), aluminum (alumitypes) or tin (tintypes) plates that are much thicker than modern film. The film holders had to be cut and rigged to accept these materials:

Modern film holder

Modified for wet-plate photography

You can find more information on how to adapt modern film holders at:http://www.collodion.org/plateholderconversion.html

Of course, you can not do any collodion photography without the appropriate chemicals; and acquiring all the necessary products can be fairly expensive... I decided to purchase a collodion kit from Bostick and Sullivan. It had everything I needed to get started and offered the advantage that I could concentrate on learning and mastering the techniques involved with collodion without worrying about correctly mixing the chemicals. This dramatically decreased the possible manipulations mystakes and made it easier for me to troubleshoot any problems that might arise. Here is the kit:

You also need a darkroom to prepare and develop the plates. Mine is the laundry room which I happily share with our two cats (who are best described as poopin' machines) and their litter box. It has a wonderful romantic atmosphere...

In wet-plate photography everything happens fairly quickly. You have to expose and develop the plate while it is still wet (hence the name), you only have a window of a few minutes to prepare the plate, sensitize it, take your photo and process the image. As a consequence your darkroom and the place of your photo shoot have to be close so you can run from one to the other. For now, as I don't have a portable darkroom (which I hope to build as soon as possible) I am limited to taking photographs in the vicinity of my house. I am anxious however to start photographing the gorgeous landscape of Colorado and hope to find soon a way to do so.