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.