Backpacking collodion shoot

In the past few months, I have been experimenting with ways to render my wet-plate equipment more portable. After putting all my gear on a motorcycle and riding the dirt trail of the Colorado front range, yesterday I backpacked and shot tintypes for the first time.

Of course, I wasn't able to fit my Calumet C1 8x10 in this backpack. I decided to purchase a Mamiya RB67 with a polaroid back to make small (3.5 x 3.5 in) plates.

For my portable darkbox I modified a very old changing bag and built a lightweight tubular frame to manage an inside space:

I cut a window in the bag, taped rubylith on a plastic support and used velcro to hold this in place.
The bag is just big enough to put my small silver tank or my developing and washing trays. It was a little bit tricky to get used to the set-up:

 I still have to iron out a lot of details, but I am psyched that the set-up worked and that I made two beautiful little plates:

Here is a short video of the process, thanks to my 7-year old daughter, Enora:

My Parents

I have been shooting collodion for almost two years now, my parents have been following my progress and commenting on my photographs all this time. However I had never been able to show them the process until last week. On a slow day of their visit from France, I dragged them in front of my camera and made the following portraits. I am very happy with the results and glad I could show them what is involved with creating a plate. They both seem to enjoy the experience.

Madeleine.

Joseph.

Selection of wet-plate collodion photographs

Near Gross Reservoir, Boulder, CO.

Flatirons, Boulder, CO.

Officer Gulch, Frisco, CO.

South Boulder Peak, from Eldorado Spring road, CO.

Plainview Road, CO.

Summit Lake, Mount Evans, CO.

Summit Lake, Mount Evans, CO.

Eldorado Canyon, CO.

Eldorado Canyon, CO.

Four Mile Canyon, After the fire.

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO.

Portraits with vintage lens - bis

A few weeks back, we had family members visiting from out of town. It gave me the opportunity to continue testing a new collodion formula and my no-name petzval lens. Here are the two portraits I made:

Aaron

Becky.

Near Gross Reservoir

Somewhere in Colorado.

Eldorado Canyon State Park

After a few-months hiatus, I was happy to be back shooting in the field. I went back to a personal favorite: Eldorado Canyon State Park.

Denis

Catching up with my compost - II

Here are a few more tintype "from the compost":

Radishes Tops.

Germinating Potatoes.

Orange Peel.

Tomatillo Skin.

Sweet Potato Tops.

Sweet Potato Peel

La Lettre De La Photographie

Part of the series "From the compost" is featured on the website La Lettre De La Photographie. I couldn't be happier.

Take a look by clicking on the following link: Weekend Portfolios.
Denis

Portaits with a vintage lens.

I mentioned in a previous post that I started experimenting with portraiture using artificial lighting. I invested in two Fotodiox C-1600 lights:

 

And fitted each of them with 16 daylight balanced (5500K) CFLs. The CFLs are 100 W equivalent. 
I had read that a few wet-plate photographers were using them with good results for portraiture and still life  photography.


Unfortunately, even at my lens largest aperture, my exposure times with this set-up for portraits have been in the 30-40s range. Although this produces for the sitter an experience similar to what people went through in the late 1800s (meaning painful and unpleasant), it made portraiture very impractical.

I thought that part of the problem was using a modern lens with multi-coating, which possibly filtered out a lot of the UV light that collodion responds so well to. I decided to look for a fairly cheap vintage (and uncoated) lens and found a 10 in. Baush and Lomb brass lens:

At this point I have mounted the lens on a temporary black foamcore lens board with black tape. I just couldn't wait to get a lens board made to try it out.
This is the first portrait I made with the B&L lens:

Rachel.

This photograph has a very different quality than anything I have produced so far with my modern lens. It has a pretty soft focus, very shallow depth of field and evident distortions. It wasn't quite I expected but the aesthetic is growing on me very rapidly. I see a lot of potential with this lens.
In addition I am happy to report that my exposure time was only 12s. It seems that indeed the coating on my modern lens increases exposure time. However I also made a slight change to my chemistry, so I will have to do a side by side comparison to verify this conclusion.

Yesterday, a fellow photographer visited me to witness first hand the making of a wet-plate collodion photograph. I made a portrait of him in the same conditions as Rachel's image:

Marco.

Catching up with my compost

Broccoli

Deconstructed Beet.

Sprouting Patatoe.

Lemon.

Apple cores.

Pear.

Zucchinis.

Eggplant.

Eldorado Canyon - Ter

This is the last image from Sunday's shoot:

I got to catch a climber waiting for his turn at the big boulder by the river.

Denis

Eldorado Canyon - Bis

Eldorado Canyon.

Here is the second shot of my outing to Eldorado Canyon:

The plate is a little over-developed. While processing the image, I saw that a part of the sky had not received any developer, by the time I tried pouring developer there, I had gone past my developing time...

Eldorado Canyon

I apologize to the few of you who follow the blog, it has been a while since I posted anything new...
Be reassured, I haven't lost interest in wet-plate collodion, it is still very present in my life and my current favorite photographic medium. I have a very specific project in mind, it is an exploration of portraiture and of the specific characteristic of collodion photograph. The project is pretty involved and the photographs I have taken so far are not yet where I want them to be. I am not quite ready to share them...
However, today, for the first time in three month, I went out and took some landscape photographs. My goal was to get back in the groove and to test my new very wide angle lens. In the past I went to Eldorado Canyon, but couldn't really capture the place because the canyon is so narrow that my normal lens only covered a small portion of the cliffs.
Here is the first shot of the day. Far from perfect, but enjoyable nonetheless (I think):

At the entrance of the park.

Denis