Finally a book!

Hi,

I finally got my act together and created the first book coming out of the Collodion 365 project. Just on time for the holidays! The book showcases some of the photographs from the series "A Collection of Somewhat Random Specimens".

Please take a look:

A Collection of Somewhat Random Specimens by Denis Roussel | Make Your Own Book

Also coming soon, a special Christmas bundle will be available for purchase. Stay tuned!

A visit from Stephanie

Yesterday, Stephanie Sadler, owner of Teal Art Gallery in Breckenridge, stopped by to pick up some photographs from the series "From the compost".
I took advantage of her visit to show her the wet-plate collodion process and make the following portrait of her:

Stephanie.

We took this picture outside, in my backyard, in the shade of the neighbor's house. I used a blue background, which comes out pretty light. Stephanie did a great job staying still for the 9s exposure.

If you ever go to Breckenridge, you should definitely stop by Stephanie's gallery. It is right on main street, the space is beautiful and the artwork is visually stimulating and intellectually engaging. You can also check the gallery's website at: www.tealartgallery.com.

Shooting ambrotypes in Boulder, CO

Recently I have been working with ambrotypes: wet-plate collodion photographs shot on glass.

In the past, most of my images were done on aluminum coated with a black enamel paint. I buy the aluminum cut to size; I only have to peel the protective layer of plastic and it's ready to roll. This made my life easy and I liked it!

But I also enjoy challenges - as you might have noticed when I decided to pull a trailer carrying 80 lbs of equipment and chemicals with my bike, on a rugged trail... So here I am cutting glass, cleaning it with alcohol, cleaning it in my dishwasher, cleaning it with whiting... When the glass plates are finally cleaned, I sub the edges with albumen (a mixture of egg white and water). This helps the collodion adhere to the plates and avoid the lifting of the emulsion during processing.

On Monday, a friend, Larry, stopped by to witness the production of a wet-plate collodion photograph. After shooting a small alumitype successfully, I did my first 8x10 ambrotype:

Larry.

And today, I headed toward Boulder, parked my car near Lee High street and shot a couple ambrotypes of the Foothills. They came out really nice.

Today was a good day!

8x10 collodion landscapes.

After having done my first 8x10 plates at home, I needed to see if I would get decent results in the field. I had some doubts on the size of my portable cardboard darkroom and was also curious to see how much more difficult it would be.
I put my darkbox in the back of my trusty Toyota Sienna (not the most glamorous car, but it's the right size for this type of work) and headed out towards Eldorado canyon. I parked at the Fowler trail head.

I couldn't lug my camera very far - which I expected since it weighs 16 lbs - but found a nice view of the foothills:

Fowler Trail, near Eldorado Springs

My cardboard darkroom was very cramped, but I managed sensitizing, developing and washing inside. I had to fix the plate outside the car, but that worked just fine. I am happy to verify that I can use my current workflow for the larger plates.

Here is the second shot of the day:

Fowler Trail.

It was a beautiful and quiet morning.

First plates out of the Calumet C1

Last Friday, I finally got all my equipment and chemicals ready to give larger plates a try. It was almost as challenging as my first day in wet-plate collodion photography.
I got very used to my small 3.25x4 in plates and was very comfortable with the process. Going up in size threw me for a loop. I couldn't hold the larger plates the same way so I had to relearn all the gestures. It took me a while to figure out a procedure that felt right.
Eventually I got a decent first plate out:

First plate.

When Elaiza came home from school, she let me take a portrait of her. This is the second plate of that day:

Elaiza.

I really like the size of the new plates, they have a presence that can't be ignored.

8x10 lens

I received my new used lens yesterday:

Schneider Symmar S 360 mm

I can not wait to get my chemicals and give 8x10 plates a try!

Home-made Red Plexiglas Silver Tank

As I am moving up to 8x10 I have to upscale a lot of my equipment, including my silver tank. I had built my first tank out of red Plexiglas and decided I would do the same. The tank looks great and the red Plexiglas filters out some of the light that could fog my plates. 

Here is a picture of my old silver tank:

It has worked great and I have loved it, but I wanted to change the stand. When I had the Plexiglas cut last year, the two triangles of the stand cost me as much as all the other pieces. Also I wanted a tank with a smaller footprint for transport. I like the design of Lund Photographics ‘ traveling tanks and decided to emulate their stand.

Here is the plan I used to get the Plexiglas cut:

 

Here are all the pieces:

I just needed to assemble them.

Half of the tank gluing.

I inserted the stand hardware before gluing the top of the tank.

Tank of the left and cover on the right.

 

I made the stand out of aluminum: 1/8” thick and ¾” wide. It was easy enough to drill through and to bend into shape:

 Here is the finished product:

Front

Side.

Eventually I will put a rubber gasket in the lid and install latches to make it waterproof and allow the transport of silver nitrate in the tank itself.

Blazing the trail in Colorado!

Since doing wet-plate collodion landscapes I have been dreaming of taking my mobile darkroom on mountain trails and gain access to the many vistas that are not accessible by roads.

I thought I could combine my love for mountain biking with my passion for wet-plate photography, so my idea was to rig a bike trailer as a mobile darkroom. There seems to be many ways to do this: you can buy dedicated cargo trailer (but they are expensive), you can build your own trailer (which I will do eventually) or you can adapt an inexpensive kids trailer…

By the time my daughters outgrew our trailer, the fabric was too damaged to pass the trailer on to someone else. I took it apart and only kept the bottom frame. It was more than a year ago. I knew that eventually I would do something with it. It all came together last weekend:

As such I can use the trailer to transport cargo, go grocery shopping, rig it to Enora’s trail-a-bike and become a three-component biking machine (which entertains my daughter very much).

It so happens that my cardboard darkbox fit perfectly on top of the frame. This leaves a space under the box, so I had to reinforce its bottom with a couple pieces of composite wood panels. The question that was left was: Can I fit all my gear, chemicals and developing equipment in the darkbox for transport? I could:

So I was ready to go and try it out.

Since I started mountain biking in the foothills, I have wanted to photograph a particular view of Eldorado Canyon. I knew where I would be going.

I packed everything in the car:

Once at the trailhead, I unpacked everything, set the darkbox on the trailer and headed out. After a couple minutes and a steep slope, I needed a break:

After about another 15 minutes I was looking at my favorite vista in the foothills. I disconnected the trailer from the bike:

This what it looks like when I start unpacking:

The darkbox stays on the trailer at all times, I just sit of the ground and wrap myself in the dark cloth.

Here is one the plates I did:

It is not one of my best plates but still a satisfying result for a first try-out.

I am pretty happy with the day. The trailer and gear are pretty heavy, but I managed to pull the load. I haven’t broken any equipment. I met a couple people who were very curious about my set-up and seem to enjoy learning about the process. 

There are a couple things I need to adjust: I had only used a couple screws and bolts to attached the wood to the bottom of the box, it wasn’t enough and one part of the cardboard got torn. I am thinking that I need to cut a sheet of plywood that would cover the entire bottom of the box and one that would be become the inside surface of the darkbox; I could then sandwich the cardboard between the two and have a very sturdy bottom.

I will keep you posted on my next bike trip.

Moving up in wet-plate collodion photography

During my first year taking wet-plate collodion photographs, I have used an inexpensive 4x5 Omega view camera, fitted with a normal 210 mm lens. 

My trusty 4x5 Omega View.

Although it is a modern large format camera designed to shoot with film, using it for wet-plate collodion only required a simple modification of the film holder. 

It is fairly easy to modify a modern film holder to accept thicker aluminum or glass plates.

At the beginning I felt somewhat limited by the size of my tintypes (3.25x4 in), but learnt to love the format and the intricate delicacy of the small photographs.

This is my favorite portrait of Elaiza from the Collodion365 project

Nonetheless I have decided to move up and invest in a larger 8x10 camera. After much research and soul searching, I found a camera that seemed to fit my needs and my budget: a calumet C1. As most people, I eventually found myself on ebay bidding on a C1 and biting my nails hoping that someone wouldn’t outbid me within the last few seconds of the auction. After a little bit of drama, I received the beast yesterday:

The Calumet C1!

With an old fashion 35 mm Canon SLR to give a sense of scale.

Its cosmetic condition shows that it has been well used, but as the Calumet C1 has a reputation of toughness and longevity I am not too worried. The crucial point is that the bellows are light tight and that all movements are operational.

I chose a C1 for a few reasons:

·      It is a workhorse, and is tough as nail.

·      It folds to a somewhat manageable size.

·      It has a lot of bellows. (I take a lot of still life photographs with small objects, but I don’t have the finances to buy a dedicated macro lens, so I have to rely on long bellows to achieve an adequate reproduction ratio.)

·      It has a lot of movements: tilt, swing and shift in front, tilt and swing in back.

·      It is affordable.

Of course the camera has some drawbacks:

·      It is very heavy (16 lbs)

·      It is pretty ugly…

Now I am in search of a lens for my lovely monster. I have to say that I have learnt a lot about large format lenses in the past few days. Here is a very brief and crude list of information that I found useful when shopping for a lens:

1.     A normal lens for an 8x10 falls in the 300 – 360 mm range of focal lengths. A wide angle lens would have a focal length inferior to 240 mm.

2.      With an 8x10 camera, the minimum lens coverage is 13 in. or about 330 mm. 

3.     You can easily find information on the internet on each lens coverage. It just take a bit of time, and is not that exciting…

4.     The best resource I have found to get acquainted with large format lens is: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/lenses-primer/

5.     You can find convertible lenses that will offer two or three different focal length depending on how many of the lens’ elements you decide to shoot with. It might be an affordable alternative to buying multiple lenses.

I will keep you posted on my progress...

Life after Collodion365

It’s been a month since I complete my Collodion365 project. After taking wet-plate collodion photographs on an almost daily basis, I spent 4 weeks without touching my camera. I needed the respite…

I have also been busy preparing my upcoming show in October. I have done a lot of printing, mounting and visualizing. I am really excited about the show and believe it will look great.

I the past couple days, I have been feeling the urge to shoot again. I needed my collodion fix, so yesterday I went out to take a few landscape photographs. I was a bit anxious to see if I’d lost some of the control I had acquired over the process. Also I sold the enclosed trailer I used as a mobile darkroom (I am hoping to invest in an 8x10 camera), and reverted to using my cardboard-box-mobile-darkroom. It looks like this:

I was curious to see if I could manage the same results in a less comfortable and less roomy environment. I headed down Hwy 93 towards Golden to photograph the plains and a rock formation that towers over the highway. After a couple unsatisfying images, I found a spot I liked and produced this diptych:

It turned out pretty well, which was very reassuring. I am looking forward to continuing creating landscape collodion photographs. It might have to wait for next Spring, but by that time I should have a larger camera and have designed a mobile darkroom to take on hiking and biking trails. Or I will have bought a lama to carry my gear…

Collodion 365 - Fuzion Magazine

Hello,

Some of the photographs from the series "From the compost" have been published in issue 3 of Fuzion Magazine. This issue is entirely dedicated to wet-plate collodion photography and showcase amazing images.
Take a look: Fuzion Magazine

Denis

Collodion 365 - the video

Collodion du jour - 365

Summit Lake, Mount Evans, CO.

It seems very fitting to finish on a view of Summit Lake on Mount Evans. I've made it to the end of my self-inflicted year long assignment: 365 wet-plate collodion photographs! It feels great to have made it all the way. Thank you to all of you for following the blog and helping me get through the highs and lows of such a journey.
I have a lot of projects in mind already, so stay tuned. But in the meantime, mark your calendar for the Collodion365 exhibition at ArtworkNetwork in Denver in October. Come and join me on first Friday, October 7th.

Best,

Denis

Collodion du jour - 362 & 363 & 364

Summit Lake, Mount Evans, CO.

Collodion du jour - 361

Fly fishing, near Golden, CO.

Collodion du jour - 359 & 360

Highway 6, near Golden, CO.

Collodion du jour - 358

Elaiza.

I had to do one more photo of Elaiza before the project is over!

Collodion du jour - 357

Tintype "From the compost".

Collodion du jour - 356

Tintype "From the compost".

Collodion du jour - 355

Tintype from "A collection of somewhat random specimens".

Collodion du jour - 354

Tintype from "A collection of somewhat random specimens".

Collodion du jour - 352 & 353

Tintypes from "A collection of somewhat random specimens".

On our first camping trip of the summer, the girls and I found a pretty complete skeleton by the river near our campground. It took us a while to get all the small bones out of the ground, but it was much fun. Just like digging for a long lost treasure. After bleaching the skeleton, Enora decided we should reconstruct it. Not an easy task. First we had to identify the animal, which we were able to do with the help of John Demboski at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. This is the cranium of an ill-fated beaver.
We've gone as far as putting the jaws back together, then got overwhelmed by the cheer number of bones and our poor understanding of beaver morphology.

Collodion du jour - 351

Tintype from "A collection of somewhat random specimens".

Collodion du jour - 350

Home science experiment.

Collodion du jour - 349

"From the compost".

Collodion du jour - 348

From the compost.

Collodion du jour - 347

"From the compost".

Collodion du jour - 346

"From the compost".