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.
A few days ago, for the first time ever in my experience with wet plate photography, I mixed up collodion from scratch. I thought I'd share about the experience.
New York-based photographer James Weber recently shot a series of portraits of WWE wrestling superstars using the 1800s wet plate collodion process.
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.
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.
During a photo shoot last summer under the hot sun in the South of France, photographer …
Want a crazy photography challenge? Try photographing a snowflake. Want to make it even more challenging? Try doing it with the wet plate collodion process.
That's what a couple of photography professors over at the Rochester Institute of Technology recently attempted and pulled off.
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.
Love the look of wet plate collodion photographs? Did you know you can give any digital photo that same look using Photoshop? It's a technique that can be learned in about 10 minutes.
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.
Want to see how wet-plate collodion photography is done but have the attention span of a goldfish? Our buddy Sam Cornwell over at Phogotraphy has created an unusual step-by-step wet plate walkthrough -- everything is crammed into a 6-second Vine video.
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'.
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.
"Barbie Blad" by photographer Hamid Blad is a series of portraits that mixes the old and the new. The oldness is contributed by the fact that they are created using the 19th-century collodion process, while the newness is due to the fact that each portrait is of a Barbie doll.
Photographer Justin Borucki has spent the better part of a year and a …
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.
Skateboard company Element recently put together a wonderful little mini-documentary titled The Road to Wolfboro. In it, a dedicated film crew follows photographer Brian Gaberman around as he shares his fascination of wet plate photography and captures some of the most beautiful scenes across the east cost.
From portraits to surreal scenes that feel as if they were pulled out of some long-lost storybook, the wet plate collodion photography of Alex Timmermans is unlike any we've seen or featured before.
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.
Keliy Anderson-Staley is an assistant professor of photography at the University of Houston. Her work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, the California Museum of Photography and the Portland Museum of Art, and is currently on view at the Houston Center for Photography.
Her book of portraits, On a Wet Bough, is forthcoming from Waltz Books. She is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery.