Along with the other work that Cat and Kerri did with me for my Black Silk Nudes project, we shot some wet plate that day as well. The first one, below is an 8x10 Ruby Ambrotype.
Here's a photo that show the color of the glass...Ruby Ambrotypes are nice. They have a nice warm feel in person, but if you put something black behind it, it looks like the above image.
The above image was shot on alluminum.
This one was shot on Black Glass.
I also had some fun with my Polaroid SX-70 and The Impossible Project's Instant Film, PX70 COLOR SHADE for the behind the scenes.
And here's a few of Kerri. My favorite of the day was this one, below...on alluminum
The light was a 2K Arri with a silver card fill. 12 seconds
So I recently picked up a few boxes of the new Impossible Project 8x10 instant film. I've been waiting for this for a long time. Polaroid made the last 8x10 batch in 2006. It's been so long that the pods have all dried up, which makes it unusable even if you could find a box on ebay.
Enter the Impossible Project. The Impossible Project had bought all of the 8x10 production machinery from Polaroid just days before they went into bankruptcy. They focused on all of the smaller films first, but finally, they were able to put their attention to starting up the 8x10 production. This is some of the film from the first production run. I took a workshop at The Impossible Project office to make sure I got a handle on how to use the new film. It's not a peel apart film like the original polaroid was, although you still need the polaroid processor to use it.
First thoughts are this is a very cool development for old process lovers. Being able to shoot this format will bring a whole new generation to large format photography and keep it alive. The artistic possibilities are also something that you will never get from digital or some filter that becomes the new rage. Instagram can't create these effects. There is something to be said for doing it the analog way.
Below are the two shots I took. One of their employees, Kyle, was kind enough to model for me.
You could actually just keep it like this and that could be your final product. But....there are other options of what you can do with the new film. I experimented with 2 of the options.
1. Do an emulsion lift and put the lifted emulsion onto some other medium. In this case, I put it on some 300 gsm matte paper(below), which is my favorite application for polaroid.
2. Scan the negative side, invert it, and blow it up from there(Below). I definitely see some fun applications for this. I love the dark, mysterious nature of this.
First things first. Get your tools together. Cut off the edges of the film first. That will make the lift so much easier.
So, I took a few videos showing how I did the emulsion lift. It's a little different from the original polaroid lifts. You used to have to boil water, then put the polaroid in. With the Impossible Project film, you just need hot water, comfortable to the touch.
Just play them one right after the other to see the process.
Sorry about the sloppy film work here...I took my eye off the camera a few times...lol.
Ok, so I forgot to shoot this image for the other photograph...so this is where you use a piece of transparent film to get the emulsion out of the water. You can now shape the emulsion how you wish it to show up on your fine art paper.
So I used a 300 gsm paper for my base. It's good to use a thick paper as otherwise the wetness will make it curl up. I used Matte Medium for the adhesive base. Just use a brush to apply evenly.
Once again...sorry, we're switching up images to show you the last phase...forgot to film it on the other one.
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Here's the inverted Scan again. You have to bring down the blacks quite a bit to see all of the detail.
It's funny, I learned that by baking the emulsion in my attempt to dry it out faster, it actually made it turn sepia. So, if you like that, get your bake on. 300 degrees, keep the door open, and cook until you like it...just don't burn it. ;)
As you can see, it now has a sepia tonality to it on the top. The print was hanging out of my little toaster oven, so the bottom is still more black and white...so I thought I'd keep it that way.
Well, that's it for now. I'm going to do another shoot from start to finish and try to make it one movie next time. Until then, I hope some of you go out, pick up some film, and keep this wonderful large format art alive!
Hey everyone,
Well, I finally got a chance to do the second nude in my series with a wonderful model, Abigayle. I had an idea, that as I have a 12 second exposure, why not use that time and do some creative blurring of fabric using the wind machine.I'm very excited to be shooting on two types of glass for the first time. Black glass and Ruby glass ambrotypes.
There is something about this old process creating these unique works of art that you can't create in any other way. It's wonderful, because you can do subtle variations using lighting, time of exposure, developing, etc, to make each one a little different. I wanted to have the fabric moving fast so it would blur out. I wasn't sure what the end result would be, but I thought it would be pretty cool. I'm very happy with what came out. I'm looking forward to continuing the series and incorporating more of this motion blur in my work.
The Camera: Anthony Imperial Climax Studio Camera. Voightlander lens circa 1875. I'm not sure of the aperture, but I think it's around 3.6.
My lighting was a 2k hotlight and a 1.2k hmi, which is why you see 2 different shadow intensities. Exposure was 12 seconds. Old workhorse collodion + cyanide fixer.
Black glass
Black Glass
My biggest problem with the shoot was seeing the image in the dark box. I really had no idea until I left if there was an exposure...I have to work on my red light inside the box. A lot of guess work went on...
Ruby Glass
These last two are moodier. I love the edge detail that comes from doing wet plate. It makes each image one of a kind.
Now that I’ve got all the necessary materials, I can finally green light this project. I’m going to do a series of nudes on glass negatives and various metals, tin and aluminum. I’m really enjoying the process, but it’s very strange ending up with only a few plates from each shoot. The setup + taking each shot is around 30 minutes / plate. In the first plate, below, we shot it three times to try to get it right. There goes an hour and a half. We shot 6 plates and I ended up with these three that I liked the best. It certainly makes you take your time before you take the shot. Here is the lovely, Eden…
Eden I: In this first shot, I was trying to get it a little sharper, but after 3 attempts, it was just too hard of a position to hold for 10 seconds. I used a 2k hot light here, which is usually a lot of light for normal film or digital cameras. In wet plate, which is around 1 ISO, you need a lot of light to record an image. The shot grows on me the more I look at it though. I think a lot of these images are going to have a different feel to them due to the process, and it’s one of the things that I’m really enjoying about it.
Eden II
Eden III: I’m not quite sure what caused the white areas in the top left and right, but they’re in the image. It can’t be wiped off. My silver nitrate is new, so I’ve heard of such things happening with that…more mysteries in wet plate land.
That’s all for now. Look out for the next one soon…
So...let's just say that it doesn't always work out the way you want it to. Kind of a life-ism, possibly, but many times true in Wet Plate Photography. I was on vacation in upstate New York and had the chemistry on hand...had the camera in the car, but no dark box and no red light. Without the darkbox and light, there would be no wet plate shooting...but I HAD everything else...so....I thought I'd give it a shot and create a quickie, cheap Dark Box with light.
I headed to the dollar store and the hardware store. For about $60, I build my darkbox and had a flashlight with an untested red tupperware filter...see below. Collodion is not sensitive to red light, thus you can have a red light on in your darkroom and not expose the film. Usually you need a red glass filter over your light.
So this is my DIY Dark Box Project that Almost worked and a few very interesting plates that came from it...
Ok, so at the dollar store, I found some red tupperware lids that had an opening as wide as the flashlight that I bought. I thought it was perfect!. I had no idea if this was good enough, but I thought it was a shot.
Here's the quickie dark box that I created out of some simple cardboard and packing tape.
add in a large tarp for the light proofing and there you have it! Darkroom in a box. :)
Ok, so all was well. I had the chemistry, the dark box, the camera, materials...let's find a destination.
I was in upstate New York, near Naples and I remembered a really old cemetary there that I drove by that was near our bed and breakfast. I thought it would make an interesting backdrop. My wife and I took off and found it. I found a tombstone that I thought was interesting. The name on the tombstone was LYON. This person was alive from 1815-1902. There happened to be a LYON Street in the town of Naples as well, so I'm sure this individual's family had something to do with the town's origins. It was also one of the more beautiful tombstones in the cemetary, half of which contained graves of people born in the 1800's. Since I was shooting an art form that was also born in the 1800's, I thought it would be an appropriate place to document.
So here's the moment of truth...was my red tupperware filtered light good enough, or not the right red(it was only tupperware...)
Let's just say that it didn't go as planned...
Both of these images have been flipped in photoshop so that you can read it. In the original plates, the words would be backwards.
The red tupperware over my flashlight ended up not being good enough. It was exposing my plates from the beginning. Interestingly enough, they're still beautiful. The cross, in both photos shows up and the tombstone's LYON also shows up.
So, a miss for a nice wet plate, but it was a learning experience. They are quite interesting plates even with them being as flawed as they are. Since this time, I've built a proper dark box and I'm SUV Ready for travel. :)
[The group of us at John Coffer's Farm studying Wet Plate Photography. I'm on the left in the back...]
I’ve been a professional photographer for around 18 years now. In that time, I dedicated 6 wonderful years in the U.S. Navy as a photographer. This is truly where I fell in love with photography as a process and an art. Back then, it was all film. Black & white, color, darkrooms, chemicals..it was crusty and dirty, but it was fun! The processes were harder to do, but really satisfying when it was done right. When I was in the darkroom and I saw the image coming up from a print in the developer, it really was magical.
Well, time has marched on and things have gotten simpler and more accessible to the masses. Digital has come of age and photography has become…truly…easy. Now, I’m not saying anything about anyone’s talent, or eye, or anything related to their photography being good or bad, I’m just talking about the process.
We’ve come a long way, but there is something to be said for taking the long road, or the road less travelled. Taking your time and doing things by hand. I was in search of just such a thing when I visited the farm of John Coffer to learn from him the skills and techniques needed to shoot Wet Plate successfully.
Instagram has proven to society that what it wants is what we once had…what once was. Borders on images, light leaks, scratches on film, different color temperatures, square formats, polaroids…all of it. We, as a society, are eating it up. What we are trying to get is what we once had, but easier, simpler, NOW. We are living in the very spoiled age of instant gratification. Anything we want is at our fingertips, to a point that if something takes too much time, it gets discarded and a faster, easier route is looked for.
I found out about wet plate photography and was completely enamored with it.
It’s name, Wet Plate Photography, comes from the fact that you have to put a wet chemical, collodion, on a surface(glass, tin, aluminum). Then, you have around 10 minutes to shoot and develop that plate(time depends on the heat/environment) before it dries up. After it dries up, you don’t get an image. So it’s challenging in the field, but very do-able. The final result is so unlike any other form of photography. It’s beautiful.
Each glass negative, ambrotype, or Tintype made takes around 30 minutes or more to make from start to finish. It slows you down and makes you think about what you’re shooting.
My trip to John Coffer’s farm in the woods was born out of a desire to get back some of the simple joy it is to see the image come up again in front of me, get my hands dirty, and create something from nothing. I didn’t realize I missed it until I started buying polaroid and film again. The analog nature of it was giving me something that digital just didn’t. I didn’t want it, “simple”, anymore. I wanted to put the magic back into photography.
So what this post covers is my journey to John’s farm and some of the experiences and photos taken during my time taking his class. What I can say unequivocally is that is was a profoundly eye opening experience and one that I would like to share.
This is just the first step, the first experience, in what will be an ongoing exploration of this early art of photography.
It all started with a long drive, just me and Delilah(My Zipcar)
Definitely one of the things I miss living in the city…trees, mountains, fresh air, wide open expanses.
At the lodge now…loving the sky.
I‘m off to Coffer’s now. You know you’re getting close when you hit the dirt roads. He’s a little bit off the beaten path.
We have arrived. This is also John’s only form of communication. He doesn’t have a phone and he’s proud of it. U.S. Mail all the way…
So This is where it all happens. The tent in the middle has a darkroom, a sink, and is filled with all kinds of historical cameras, lenses, and old tintypes. This is where he did most of the teaching, although we shot all over the farm.
This is what John rode around in for 11 years pulled by Oxen at 2 miles an hour. He was recreating the life of a 19th century photographer. It’s got a full darkroom inside. If this thing could talk…
The deep sink for washing and fixing the plates.
This is called a, “Dark Box” and is what you use in the field to develop your plates. It’s basically a portable darkroom. I need to build one that can fit in the back of an SUV so I can take this show on the road.
These are all the chemicals you need to do wet plate. On the left, in the box is your Silver Nitrate bath. The yellow liquid is your developer, then the little bottle is Collodion, and lastly, a jug of water to pour on your print to stop developement.
Here’s a few shots of John’s home and some shots of the farm…
This is John fixing the plate he shot of the class.
This is the first portrait I did of John. It’s also my first plate. We started out small as it’s easier to get a handle on how to put the collodion on the plate that way. It’s a 4×5 tintype. You can click any of the images in this post to see them bigger.
This is me fixing the second plate I did of John. It was shot on Ruby Glass.
This is the image in the above video that I shot of John. The Ruby Glass prior to me shooting it(below).
John, shot through the ruby glass filter…teaching away.
In general, the farm is awesome. As I live in New York City, I need my nature fix to get me balanced. He’s got many animals on the farm. Horses, a donkey, cows, bulls, a cat or two…and lots of chickens. I have come to appreciate how cool chickens are during my time at John’s. They will just randomly follow you around the farm. They’ve just got one thing on their mind…food.
I found out they like Doritos, donuts, pretty much anything that we consider food, they’re good with.
With that in mind, for one of my plates, I decided to dedicate one to, “The Chicken Whisperer”. See below. The chicken actually stood pretty still for this…lol.
Here’s the “Chicken Whisperer” getting fixed. I had thought I was shooting vertically, but I had put the plexi holder in horizontally. Fortunately, I had framed him up in the center and still got a good image…lol.
This is the glass plate negative(clear glass) that I shot and the albumen print made from that glass plate(below).
Below is the albumen print, “cooking” in the sun. Very cool process to create your own photographic paper from egg whites(albumen) and silver nitrate.
james-weber-photographer-07242012_3312
So after lots of instruction, we were off shooting what we wanted to on the farm. I set up a few shots in the woods. This is the first time I’m getting to use the camera I bought. It’s an Anthony Climax Imperial Camera, 8×10 camera. As I have not gotten a tripod for the camera, I used one of John’s wooden benches to get some lower angle shots.
Getting my Luke Skywalker in the swamp moment.
Another little solarization in the bottom right hand corner. You can see the nice swirly bokeh in the top of the shot. That comes from the Petzval lens design in the old brass lenses. This lens is a Voightlander. I love it as I plan on doing portraits with it and it has a very short depth of field when the bellows is extended.
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So John was telling me, when I asked about putting the camera back into the bull’s pasture to be careful as they like to, “investigate” things as a bull had knocked his camera over once before. Of course, I didn’t listen. Now, I had to go get the bench, place it, then go back and get the camera. This is what I saw when I got back. They were “investigating” the bench. It’s a good thing I had not brought the camera out there yet.
My last two plates I shot at the farm were of John and his girlfriend Ann. I’m very excited by these as I’m looking to do more portraits via glass plate negatives and tintypes.
As we were in his house learning to do albumen prints, I saw him from the side and thought a profile photo would be nice. You can see the head brace in the shot as well. I think the exposure here was 4 seconds in open shade.
And one of Ann…
I love both of these. Ann has such character. The beauty is in the little details, and also in the mistakes. The top left hand corner of John’s did not get processed very well, so when I took it out of the dark box, the sun hit it, then I fixed it, solarizing the corner a little. The blue line on the right is where the collodion was a little thick and did not quite develop. So, technically, there are some issues, but that’s also part of the fun. You never really know how it’s going to turn out until you develop and fix it.
Finally, we get to the Mammoth Plates. John has a 20×24 camera that we each got to shoot. It was much more difficult to prepare, shoot and develop. I was wanting to go big, but I think I’ll be shooting 8×10 for a while. There’s plenty of time for that later.
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This is me pouring collodion onto the mammoth with John’s help. Not so easy.
Here’s my 20″ x 24″ Mammoth plate image. So I was going for a little, “Cowboys and Aliens” here. John was a good sport to put on the glasses, grab one of his vintage guns, and get into the act.
At the end of the day, we all gathered around the fire and cooked up some brats, had a beer, and relaxed. It’s a lot of work carrying around those cameras, tripod(or bench in my case), setting up the shot, getting the plates poured…going to shoot it…going back to develop it. Finding out it’s not right, and doing it all over again. Then finally, Fixing it, washing it, drying it, and varnishing it. It really is great fun and I’m already planning my future shoots.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this look into my first experience shooting Wet Plate Photography.
Now where’s that DSLR of mine…gotta go make some money to pay for all the chemistry and materials now!
We shot 6 plates and I ended up with these three that I liked the best. It certainly makes you take your time before you take the shot. Here is the lovely, Eden…
