Passport photos on wet plate collodion aren't legally compliant, but you're guaranteed to have fun making them. I shot wet plate collodion passport photos using a Polaroid Miniportrait camera.
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.
Before the self timer and remote shutter release appeared in the world of cameras, photographers had a much trickier time getting themselves into group photos if they didn't have an assistant to help expose the shot. But a vintage photo has surfaced showing one photographer's clever solution to this problem.
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.
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.
After I recently saw cherry blossoms on my tree, I wanted to shoot one of them with my wet plate camera... while the blossom is still high on the tree.
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.
Wet plate photographer Markus Hofstaetter recently tried his hand at tackling an unusual project: he wanted to shoot wet plate portraits handheld.
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.
Adrian Cook is a wet plate collodion photographer based in Sydney, Australia. The Guardian made this 7-minute video in which Cook talks about his background and walks through the wet plate collodion process by shooting a photo of Sydney Harbor.
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.
Photographer Dieter Schneider started building cameras about five years ago, and last year he fashioned a 4x5 camera using a CNC Machine. This year he took things to yet another level, creating an 8x10 large format camera entirely by hand without using computer-aided machinery. You can watch the entire build process in the 35-minute video above.
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.
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.
Capturing beautiful stories. That's what wet plate photographer Ian Ruhter set out to do for his 3-year project at Slab City. But some of the most meaningful moments actually transpired within 48 hours, when English actor Gary Oldman paid Ruhter and his crew a surprise visit.
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.
French photographer Nède has been working on a project called Altered Reality in which he explores the line between mundane reality and madness. One of the images, shown above, is titled "The Unsuspecting Victim."
During a photo shoot last summer under the hot sun in the South of France, photographer …
Minnesota’s Pioneer Public Television made this 12-minute mini-documentary about wet plate photography and photographer David Rambow. Rambow discusses the …
Photographer Patrick Demmons shoots tintype portraits for about $60 a pop through his Revival Tintype studio in Oakland, California. In the 2.5-minute profile above by WIRED, Demmons offers a short and sweet look at what tintype photography is and how it's done.
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.
This is a story about a collaboration to overcome 19th century technology problems using 21st century technology to produce well lit portraits.
Luke White and I, Paul Alsop, are two English photographers living in New Zealand who came together in 2014 to make wet plate collodion portraits.
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'.
During past few weeks I have been working on a new picture I had in mind. This time I already knew the title: "The Rain Maker." It's a picture made with the collodion photographic process that was invented back in 1851.
I get a call on Saturday, February 28th, 2015, telling me “The Champ can give you an hour if you can pick him up at the hotel in 10 minutes”. “I'll be there in 8," I say to the person on the phone.
This "Champ" they are referring to is none other than Evander Holyfield, 4-time heavyweight champion of the world, and I am being offered an opportunity of a lifetime.