Photographer Markus Hofstätter had been designing parts for his cameras and 3D printing them at home when the idea to try something new struck him: 3D printing photographs. After a lot of trial and error, he successfully found a way to translate wet plate photos into 3D printed pieces.
Whenever something is bothering wet plate photographer Markus Hofstaetter, he captures his anxiety with striking, creative imagery. Lately, the idea of "division"—in ourselves, our societies, and our world—has been on his mind, so he set about capturing a "division" portrait. The twist: he didn't want to capture any visible light.
Italian photographer Ursula Ferrara's Lomography Lomo'Instant Wide camera is a bit different than others you'll find. Instead of shooting Instax Wide instant photos, it's used for capturing tiny wet plate collodion photos.
My name is Antoine Loncle, and I'm an independent photographer. I shared my homemade 8x10 box camera on several photography groups and it received a lot of interest. I figured I'd do a little write up for anyone that wanted to know more about the camera as well as see some images of the building process.
Now these are some cast portraits we can really get behind. On-set photographer Wilson Webb recently got the chance to photograph the entire cast of Best Picture nominee Little Women, but instead of shooting glitzy studio portraits, he decided to stay historically accurate and capture wet plate collodion portraits instead.
To mark the 159th anniversary of the first aerial photo in the United States, CBS Sunday Morning aired this 2-minute Almanac segment about the landmark photo by photographer James Wallace Black and how aerial photography has developed since then.
Fine art photographer Borut Peterlin was recently commissioned to shoot some ambrotypes by costume designer Alan Hranitelj, but he went a few steps beyond your standard wet plate collodion photography. In addition to shooting some beautiful multiple-exposures, he also decided to colorize the scans, creating striking photographs the likes of which we've not seen before.
I always resisted writing artist statements and bios. In school, that part of every assignment or exhibition was the most agonizing. It felt overly simplistic to just describe what the viewer was about to encounter, or why objects or abstract shapes, making my specific image or groups of images, were presented in this way or another.
I’ve been experimenting non-stop with a few new daguerreotype techniques lately, and however promising the results are looking so far, those experiments are slow going. But here’s something I thought up and was able to execute in a relatively speedy manner -- something I believe warrants a look. I don’t believe this method of making a panoramic image has ever been utilized before, so I’m dubbing it the "Antorama."
Modern Collodion has just announced the winners of the 2019 Wet Plate Competition, the second annual contest for wet plate collodion photographers around the world after launching last year.
New York photographer Justin Borucki has been documenting his city with a pop-up tintype studio out of the back of his car. While shooting a portrait for a client recently, Borucki unexpectedly captured a beautiful leaf-like pattern across the photo due to the frigid wind chill causing ice crystals to form.
In late 2018, it emerged that Tetenal, one of the largest photo chemistry companies in the world, was in serious financial turmoil. It now appears that efforts to save the business have failed, and Tetenal will reportedly be closing up for good after a whopping 172 years in the analog photography industry.
Here's something you may not have known about the 1800s wet plate collodion photography process: it can make certain tattoos disappear in photos. It's a curious phenomenon that photographer Michael Bradley used for his portrait project Puaki.
Dora Goodman, a maker of handcrafted cameras and straps, has released a new open source camera called the Goodman One that anyone can make if they have access to a 3D printer.
Photographer Markus Hofstaetter often gets asked about how he acquires the plates he uses for wet plate collodion photography. To answer that question, Hofstaetter made this 7-minute video showing how he has them custom cut on a 75-year-old machine.
This year, the wet plate supply brand Modern Collodion ran its first annual Wet Plate Competition. The 2018 contest received over 200 submissions from 75 wet plate photographers based in 19 countries. The grand prize winner is the photo above, titled "Aristolochia Pods," by Paul Barden.
There are fewer than 1,000 wet plate collodion artists practicing around the world, and as far as I know, I am the only one in the state of North Dakota. 5 years ago, I didn't own a camera and knew nothing about photography. I saw a wet plate online and I was immediately drawn to it, and thus my journey began.
Rob Gibson is a tintype photographer who works in what he calls "the world's fastest darkroom." After photographing vintage motorcycle and car events, he develops his tintypes in a 1938 Harley-Davidson sidecar that he zooms around with.
Keith Carter is a Texas-based photographer whose ethereal style and beautiful depiction of “truth and beauty” have often led him to be referred to as a “poet with a camera”. In this moving 15-minute interview with The Art of Photography, Carter discusses his career, how his projects come together, illness, and his legacy.
New York-based photographer James Weber recently shot a series of portraits of WWE wrestling superstars using the 1800s wet plate collodion process.
Photographer Khadija Saye has been confirmed as one of the 30 confirmed victims of the tragic Grenfell tower block fire that shook London, and the world, earlier this week.
For her project titled "Nebula," Spanish photographer Jacqueline Roberts shot portraits of youth in the limbo period between childhood and adolescence using the wet plate collodion process from the mid- to late-1800s. The resulting photos are haunting in their appearance.
Given that most photos are captured digitally and shared online, it’s easy to forget the beauty of a print.
A photography professor in Oklahoma recently had an awesome idea for teaching his students about the beginnings of photography: he turned his classroom into a giant camera obscura.
The Capitol was still under construction on March 4th, 1857, when photographer John Wood set up his wet plate collodion camera and captured the first known photograph of a US Presidential inauguration.
For their 32nd annual Big Shot nighttime community photo project this year, the folks over at RIT decided to light the iconic 19-story Kodak Tower skyscraper at night... by hand... with the help of 2,800 volunteers holding flashes and flashlights.
When photographer Erik Hijweege realized that there were over 22,000 species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, he was shocked... and inspired. Inspired to create a hauntingly beautiful series of glass ambrotypes depicting some of these endangered species encased in ice.
I know this topic is covered here and there and everywhere: in school and online, in workshops and lectures, on street corner posters and graffiti under freeway overpasses… However, one way or another this topic seems to either elude a lot of photographers entirely or perhaps they ignore it knowingly. Either way, after continually seeing tight headshots done with lenses possessing an obviously incorrect focal length, my personal OCD has reached a boiling point and I decided to finally do this little post complete with a demonstration.
Tested recently put on a show at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. One of the presentations was by local photographer Michael Shindler, who specializes in wet plate collodion photography.
In the 12-minute video above, Shindler transforms the theater into a studio and darkroom, introducing the live audience to this 19th-century photography process by creating a large-format tintype portrait of Adam Savage (the co-host of Mythbusters).
How small can you go when it comes to wet plate collodion photography? Photographer Anton Orlov of The Photo Palace recently experimented with this question by shooting thumbnail-sized 8x11mm tintypes using an old Minox subminiature camera -- a model A III from the 1950s.
Last week, RIT photography professor Willie Osterman held the 2015 RIT Photo MFA picnic in the front yard of his home in Bristol, New York. To commemorate the gathering, he pulled out a giant camera to shoot a wet plate collodion ambrotype portrait of the group.
On the other side of the camera, in the group, was fellow photo professor Frank Cost with a DJI Inspire camera drone. Cost used the drone to capture the wet plate shooting process from a subject's point of view before lifting off into the sky for a bird's-eye view. The drone was also captured in the resulting wet plate from the last portrait attempt.
Photographer Anton Orlov has created what he believes is the world's first camera that's both completely transparent and fully functional. It's called CLERA, short for Clear Camera, and is a camera that you can also look into while a projected photo is being exposed.
Having failed woodworking at school, probably the worst thing I could have done is venture into the world of wet plate photography.
Back in 2012, I learned the dark art of the silver stuff, just around the time the wave of interest was starting to build worldwide. However, as I live in New Zealand, an island nation, it has taken a while (and is still taking a while) to reach us. As a result, getting anything wet plate-related is quite a task. One does not simply walk into a store and buy a 'wet plate kit'.
I wish I hadn’t, but the other day I stumbled across an essay on PetaPixel entitled 12 Reasons Photographers Still Choose to Shoot Film over Digital. Bravely, the writer had polled his associates who shoot film and culled their responses down to a dandy dozen. I shook my head sadly, because I’d heard them all many times before.
But the worst part came next. I scrolled down to the comments section. I tried mightily to avert my eyes, but I couldn’t, and the lurid spectacle of grown men and women (but mostly men) verbally beating the living daylights out of each other while thousands cheered them on from the cheap seats proved too much for me.
Starting back in May of 2014, I finally put my first foot forward in the making of a 16x20 inch bellows camera. The idea to build a camera was nothing new to me, but I was always hesitant to begin construction since I am the type of person that prefers to work off a set of blue prints and directions. Unfortunately, since my drawing skills aren't amazing, it was pretty difficult to visualize and plan a solid blueprint of the project - which ultimately forced me to bite the bullet and simply begin construction of the camera and problem solve along the way.
Here's a creative (and super meta) idea for a photo project: photographer Sean Hawkey traveled to a silver mine in Peru and shot tintype portraits of the miners there using the silver they mined as his emulsion.
Dylan Burr is a full-time artist from Denver, Colorado, but despite his busy schedule and full-time job, Burr recently embarked on a personal photography project on the side. The project, however, wasn't for him. His goal was to use the raw power of wet plate collodion portraiture to give a name and story to the Denver Area homeless.
What's a photographer to do when they're in possession of a 130-year-old wooden camera and a 100-year-old lens, capable of capturing images using the wet plate collodion process?
Well, if you’re Jonathan Keys, you set out on a mission to document the modern world around you using tools that are all but ancient in the world of photography... and you get spectacular results for your effort.
From Los Angeles based photographer Jamie Johnson comes a unique series of photographs that juxtapose the past and the present in a fascinating way: large format wet plate collodion photos of children writing cheeky modern-day bad deeds on a turn-of-the-century chalkboard.
Artist Emma Howell's landscape images are unlike any we've ever run across. Not because she's capturing something unique, or using a process we've not seen before. They are unique because her images, captured using the wet plate collodion method, are exposed directly onto handblown glass vessels she creates herself.