Brief Wet Collodion Adventure - Some Tintypes of the Southern US

   Not long ago, I embarked upon a quick trip to some parts of the country I haven't explored yet, and, naturally, I carried a wet plate setup with me to see what sights inspire me to make some tintypes.  This trip was actually mainly concentrated on daguerreotypes, both historic and modern, but in this post I'll stick solely to collodion, with an additional historical treat at the end.  

  My objective was to explore a little bit of the gulf coast, and visit Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile, along with a few National Parks that can be found in Texas on the way back home.  The first plates on this journey were made right after I crossed the mighty Mississippi, in Baton Rouge.  I stopped for a bit of a hike along the river, and noticed the overabundance of white, sun-bleached shells that lined the shoreline in all directions.  After finding a shady place to park, as it was about 90F at the time, I first decided to make a plate featuring both the shells and the vast bridge I just crossed.  A 90mm Nikkor lens was used to achieve this with satisfactory, to me, results.  For the second plate, an 8in 1857 C. C. Harrison Petzval was used in order to throw the focus off a bit, and emphasize some of the blades of grass on the hill alongside rivers edge. 

  In Alabama I was rather fond of Bienville square in the middle of Mobile, and the fountain again called for the use of my trusty 90mm.  I decided to challenge myself exposure-wise, and placed the sun directly behind the second top pool, pointing the lens right toward it, so my subject is entirely backlit.  After developing the first plate, which was executed at f11 with 20sec exposure, I was overjoyed to not only find detail in the black ironworks, but also to see clear separation between the sky and the water on very top of the fountain.  For my second tintype on that location I chose to once again go to the Harrison Petzval to focus on the cross, erected there in 1909 by the Alabama Chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames. 

  After that it was back to New Orleans.  I found the hustle and bustle of Bourbon Street to be too overwhelming at night, filled with cacophony and inebriation, but in the daytime it was rather nice, and so I set up on the corner of Bourbon and Orleans streets to make a few more tintypes.  As the light was fading, a group of travelers showed up, and kindly posed for my last tintype at that location. 

  In Houston, I stopped by the San Jacinto Museum.  Located on historic battlefield where Texas gained it's independence from Mexico, it has an impressive 567.31ft obelisk, which wasn't easy to make look interesting and different in a single frame, but I did try my best to do that. The wind really did do a number on the chemistry in this plate.  Generally I would have tossed this plate and made another attempt, but somehow, unlike in most cases with dirty plates, I think the artifacts work with the subject here rather than against it. 

  While washing the above plate, I noticed that through the trees surrounding museum grounds, I could see an enormous flame of a gas mining facility, and thought to myself that I just might be able to make it within a shot range of it right at sunset, which would let me capture some of the clouds as well as accentuate the flame, and maybe even retain a bit of detail in the post-industrial landscape that gas mining places afford in droves. I used a 400mm Tele-Fujinon for these images, and at f11 these exposures were 10 and 50sec, as the post-sunset light was fading fast, and I wanted the second image to be a bit brighter than the first.

  During the night, I made it all the way to the entrance of Big Bend National Park, which borders Mexico along the Rio Grand.  There's some great wilderness and geography there, and it's definitely worth visiting, especially with more time on one's hands to spend there.   At the first location I only made one tintype, using a Schneider 150mm lens, before taking a dip in the river and cooling off.  This was the hottest day of my travels, and my car thermometer showed all the way up to 98F when I got back in after washing this plate and wrapping up the dark box and chemistry.

  Instead of calling it quits due to heat, I decided to drive about a bit more, wait for the air two drop at least a couple of degrees, and made it to the second Rio Grand overlook, where I could once again capture two countries at once in my compositions.  Finding a nice bluff that offered ample perspective, I chose the 210mm Fujinon for the view down the river, before switching to 400mm Tele-Fujinon for the upstream view.  I think while the compositions of the last two plates here are indeed very similar, I did make the second plate for a very specific reason.  The viewer may be pleasantly surprised to find one small addition within the last frame, an addition that occurred naturally, and which is a relative rarity to be captured in tintype format.

  I apologize to the viewers for the slight mismanaging of the color balance of the above tintype copies.  For some reason my copy camera (i.e. my iPhone) decided to play tricks on me this time.  Regardless though, I am happy with my little wet plate haul from this trip, and with being able to add another three states to my having visited list, now only Alaska and 4 southeastern-most states remain unexplored. 

  I'll leave you all with a call to action.  No, not the usual "support us on Patreon" stuff we're all used, to, although if someone wished to purchase one or more of the above tintypes, they are indeed for sale (with prices ranging from $250 to $400), but with a strong suggestion to go to Austin as soon as possible.   Why Austin, you may ask?  Well, because there, within the walls of Harry Ransom Center, you can find the very first photograph ever taken, and be in it's overpowering presence.   I say overpowering, because after having seen it in so many history books, having learned about the ling and frustrating path the led Niepce toward his fist successes, which he dubbed Heliograph, it is truly marvelous to be able to stand just a foot away from the actual plate that gave him the first surviving semblance of chemical image.  By golly what a treat, go and see it as soon as possible.  The installation that surrounds it is rather robust, but I don't know how much longer this seminal work will remain on public display.  The metal plate is larger than you would imagine, and the image itself is nearly impossible to see, save for when it's lit just right, and even then only on parts and at varied angles.  Due to that, there are many variations of the image online, because most all images you'll see online or in print have been heavily altered view editing in order to make the image make sense, and when I just googled it, the overzealous AI answer for first image ever was even artificially colored for some baffling reason.  No, go stand next to that plate yourself, and you'll see what I mean - the precursor to so much great art is waiting to be seen by you live!

  As always, happy shooting and until next adventures,

Anton

Mission to Utah for 8x10 Tintype Landscapes

  Last month I went on a little mission to Utah. The aim was to spend a few nights camping around Moab with a good friend, and, over a period of four days, for both of us to make 8x10 tintypes of at least a few of the stunning landscapes. Having traveled through there on multiple previous occasions, I knew of the limitless compositional possibilities that await around every corner in that state, and this time we spent a concerted effort to explore just one such region in depth. 

  Shooting 8x10 wet plate in the field is always a bit of a challenge, but it becomes exponentially more arduous when combined with an unexpected heat wave and long, steep, rocky dirt roads, which seemingly wind forever through otherworldly canyon scenery of towering red monoliths and plateaus. While truly spectacular to marvel at through polarized lenses of one's sunglasses, the true majesty of these expansive landscapes, which consist of predominately deep coral and red tones, presents another fun opportunity for problem solving, as collodion is not very sensitive to those colors.  Some days were definitely better than others, but I think we both learned a lot from this experience, as well as carried away some plates we both can be happy with. Each day we spent shooting at one or two locations, while also scouting potential spots for next day. It's easy to fall into the camp where happy accidents are central to the theme of most images, but I'm glad my friend shares my passion for chasing perfection. After all, Nature's Glory deserves one's best effort.

  Below are the nine plates I deemed worthy of keeping from this memorable excursion. They were copied while being held in hand, and very slight adjustments in saturation and so forth were made to match the already varnished plates as closely as possible. These original, signed and dated plates are offered for purchase, and are priced at $750 each. All interested parties are welcome to reach out via email - thephotopalace@gmail.com

Professor Creek View 8x10 Tintype

Canyon Habitat 1 8x10in Tintype

Canyon Habitat 2 8x10in Tintype

Castleton Tower Closeup 8x10in Tintype

View With Caslteton Tower 8x10in Tintype

Colorado River Morning View 1 8x10in Tintype

Colorado River Morning View 2 8x10in Tintype

Colorado River Afternoon View 1 8x10in Tintype

Colorado River Afternoon View 2 8x10in Tintype

Thanks as always,

Anton

Daguerreotypes of April 8th 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

  As some of you may have read in my previous post, earlier this year I did capture the fleeting moments of solar eclipse totality with both daguerreotype and wet plate mediums at once.  This having been previously unattempted, and most previous separate attempts having been done with highly specialized custom equipment, I as resigned to a fairly low level of confidence in success of my daring venture, but results did exceed expectations.  Wet plate collodion negative came out lovely, and the prints made from it can be viewed in post here.  

  Daguerreotype light sensitivity being much lower than that of collodion emulsions, my images did turn out substantially darker than what would have been achievable with much more sophisticated equipment.  I am however glad to restate that all of the six plates I prepared while in Missouri forest did indeed show an image on them, with the two I decided to keep and show here being only slightly brighter than the rest.  I believe that this quality is about maximum possible when using conventional photographic lenses and not having a tracking mechanism attached to the camera. 

  While using my usual archival materials, I decided to seal these plates in a non-traditional manner, with round openings in the mat, with an intent of concentrating viewer's focus on the small but miraculous ghost of a most magical natural sight I am yet to behold.  The images you see below are of two 4x5in daguerreotype plates, and in real life those plates do look much better.  That's ok, as nothing will ever look as good as a live daguerreotype anyway. 

Anton

Gelatin Silver Prints From Wet Plate Collodion Negative Captured During April 8 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

One of the lithographic gelatin silver prints

  While traveling to Missouri for the total solar eclipse on April 8th 2024, the main goals were to see this marvelous sight and to attempt to capture totality in both daguerreotype and wet plate collodion techniques.  Actually, initially I was just thinking of doing only daguerreotypes, but that technique can be very fickle, especially so if performed out in a completely uncontrolled natural setting.  Thus I decided to bring a wet collodion setup for backup, in case no daguerreotypes worked out, as with collodion I was pretty certain that the results would be worth the hassle. Here are a few images from that memorable day, spent amid the trees doing what I truly love. 

Zone VI 8x10 awaiting totality

Camera and dark boxes, almost time

Glass waiting for collodion

 The glass plate was coated with collodion right as totality set in, and I’ll admit it was far from my best pour, as I’ve never felt the same peculiar way before. After plunging the plate into the silver bath for sensitization, I exposed the prepped daguerreotype plates, ran back to the dark box and, without even closing its front, extracted the plate and placed it in the holder, assuming that there really isn’t going to be a lot of UV light to affect the image. Perhaps this actually acted as pre-flashing and helped my exposure. Somehow, with me pausing on my way back to the camera to stare upward with joyful awe for a few seconds, the timing worked out rather miraculously, and in the end of my predetermined 4 second exposure, the sun made its reappearance with the diamond ring moment, at which point I promptly replaced the lens cap. After developing the collodion negative, it was given one round of iodine redevelopment treatment, at which point I determined that it was of sufficient density for what I envisioned doing with it. 

Collodion negative in rinse

 The idea that I should make lith prints came to me spontaneously and almost immediately after the moment that I covered the lens, and realized that I may have a shot at having been the first person ever to capture the diamond ring moment in wet collodion. As I was rushing back to the dark box to develop the negative, I realized that all the variables beyond my control were falling in places on their own accord, with my work basically acting as a guide for the final result. It was at this point that the unpredictable nature of lithographic developer when combined with gelatin silver papers popped into my head. Every print made that way is entirely unique, because try all you want, but you’ll never match two of them, simply due to the nature of those types of developers.  There are many books written about lith developer, and so I won’t bore you with details of how it works and why it’s so fun. 

  I’m very glad that, over the past 25 years or so, every time I came across no longer manufactured photo papers, I stashed them away for something meaningful down the road. Last time I printed with lithographic developer was about 15 years ago, but I always had some laying around in case I wanted to use some of my stash of Kodalith film, which is a whole different story in its own right.  One of the funnest parts of this type of developer, is that it allows for printing on papers that with conventional developers would be entirely unusable, as paper fogs with age, and its white base starts to slowly gain tonality, going all the way to black.  Lith developers don’t hit that base fog, leaving white areas as they should be, while producing some unexpected colors with certain papers and leaving others perfectly neutral grey.  Another exciting element to printing with age-old papers is how they deteriorate, and how lith developer acts upon and exaggerates oxidation and other impurities, producing unexpected textures and patterns that vary widely depending on paper type and how each paper was affected by age. Darkroom time is sacred, and I’ve been sequestering myself in those magical spaces since the age of twelve, so here are a few images of this latest printing session. 

During enlargement onto 11x14in 

Lith developer doing its thing. 

11x14 during selective bleaching and toning

  From my vintage photo paper repository, I selected choice 8x10in, 11x14in, and 16x20in packs from companies such as Luminos, Gevaert, DuPont, Defender, Cachet, and of course Kodak. Expiration and manufacturing dates spanned almost all through the 20th century, with the oldest having been made in around 1938 (expiration date on box was 1941), and the most recent one from around 1999 (early 2002 expiration printed). Most of the paper was from 1960s and 70s, so it’s been waiting for an image for over half a century. Some of the open packs and boxes I’be been so carefully caring for apparently only had a few sheets left in them, and in one I only found two small cutoffs, but each one yielded something beautiful. Tremendous variability and lack of full control prompted me to let go off my usual yearning for high precision, and I just let each sheet finally express itself.

  Now that all of them have been meticulously spotted using our best darkroom friend SpotOne, I will do one more round of culling those prints I deem to be less than perfect, but overall I’ll end up with about 20 8x10s, maybe around 25 11x14s and 17 or so 16x20s. The first edition is now closed and below are a few samples of the prints, which were hastily copied with my phone just after the final wash.

11x14in

11x14in

16x20in

11x14in

8x10in

8x10in

16x20in

  These works are priced at $250, $500, and $750 for the three sizes in which this image has been printed. For now they may only be purchased by directly contacting me via email, and I’m glad to say that a few prints have already been acquired by people who know my art personally.  

  After doing all the varied lith prints, I did want to see what a straight print from this negative would look like, and so made an 8x10in on new Ilford paper with regular developer. Then, to see the entire negative in all its collodion glory, I pulled out some 4.5x5.5in deckle edge double weight AZO paper from 1954.  Finally, not to let my Moersch developer go to waste, I reached for the 3.5x5.5in AZO Post Card paper from 1970, and made a limited run of real mailable post cards, which will go out to places yet to be determined. On both of the AZO runs, I again used selective toning with selenium, because otherwise it would be less fun to have all prints look the same.  Here are the straight prints, showing exactly what it is that my adventure yielded. The whole thing was really a shot in the dark, but by golly I’m over the moon about it. 

8x10in straight gelatin silver enlargement 

Contact Print on 1954 AZO Deckle Edge

Contact Print on 1970 AZO Post Card paper

 To request a selection of prints available for purchase at the moment, send a message to thephotopalace@gmail.com 

 Anton

April 8 2024 Total Solar Eclipse - Photographed in Both Daguerreotype and Wet Plate Collodion Process

 I couldn’t make the trip seven years ago, when the last total solar eclipse happened over the continental US, but I promised myself that I’ll make it to the next one. Since this is a very special event that I’ve never seen before, I also decided to go all out and try to do something that possibly has never been attempted before by any one person - making images of the same totality in a daguerreotype and in wet plate collodion negative, which historically were the first two major photographic processes, wet plate replacing daguerreotypes in 1850s.  

 To the best of my knowledge, the first time a total solar eclipse was photographed by Julius Berkowski in 1851in Königsberg Prussia, while the first wet collodion image was achieved by Warren De La Rue in Spain year 1860. Neither of those gentlemen used a conventional camera, and, unlike myself, had access to major funds or/and institutions.  After doing a bit of calculations in my head, it occurred ti me that it’s likely possible to just use a large format camera and a telephoto lens. I knew that my result would likely pale in comparison to those of the Royal Prussian Observatory, but the challenge and the thrill of even trying this were too tempting to pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity.  

 I won’t bore the reader with too many details of the drive, but I will say that it was long and brutal.  The trip lasted 99 hours, in which I covered 3575mi (5720km) of road. I drove from San Diego to Oklahoma City, and from there decided to head for southeastern Missouri, as the radar was predicting highest chance of clear skies to be in that general area. When there, not far from the tiny and beautiful town of Doniphan, I found a great quiet spot to set up my two dark boxes, at The Narrows access to Eleven Points River, away from crowds and noise. 

 The larger dark box houses equipment for daguerreotype fuming and developing, while the smaller one has been my go-to wet plate location box for over a decade now.  

 The camera is Zone VI 8x10 with a 4x5 reducing back, and the lens is a 1896 Carl Zeiss Tele-Tubus IV, with 225mm Protar positive and 100mm negative elements. This lens has the finest brass work that I’ve ever seen and a shutter so complicated that two of the top repair shops in the country sent it back saying they had no clue how to approach something like this, but then I did find Carroll of Flutot’s Camera Repair in Los Angeles, and she did fix it beautifully. Brass work and shutter aside though, this is a wonderful lens. By varying the distance between positive and negative elements, it allows user to vary focal length anywhere from about 1600mm up to infinity. You do have to vary your bellows length, but, it being one of the very first telephoto designs, your bellows will be significantly shorter than what you would need for normal lenses at any given focal length.  

 The process of creating for me is a spontaneous one. The decision to involve both processes came to me only about a few weeks ago, and all the planning was done in my head, with zero testing other than fitting the lens to the camera and seeing that I’ll get an image do the size I pretty much expected. The last time I made negatives with wet plate color on was probably 5-6 years ago, it’s been all positives since then. I have also not made any serious attempts at making any daguerreotypes in the past year, when last spring I was again defeated in my ongoing quest to systemize and gain full control over the full spectrum of possible opalescence. That pursuit is proving to be so difficult that it literally put me off making plates for a year (though I think this little adventure might have reinvigorated my zeal). So, with that in mind, I was going to be happy with simply experiencing totality and going through my favorite motions in life while at it, getting any semblance of an image with both processes would be proof of concept that indeed this can be done with no extra special equipment and by one person with no team.  

  First off, I must say that the moment totality hits is not one you can prepare yourself for if you have never experienced it before. Just prior to it, I aligned my camera and checked focus the best I could, then ran over the dark box to prep the glass plate. I was pouring collodion when full totality arrived, and thankfully, as I imagined, there was just enough light for me to not miss the silver tank. The race was on, and the final mark was 3 minutes away. After dashing back to the camera, I exposed the 6 daguerreotype plates that I polished and fumed about half an hour prior. Which taking some minimal precautions not to disturb the camera and throw it out of focus, this took me about two minutes, at which point I darted over to the dark box to retrieve the collodion plate from its silver bath and placed it in holder. With the final plate in my hands I paused to gaze at the spectacle that was unfolding above me; and it was truly magical. I allowed myself about 15 seconds of awe. There anre many descriptions of totality and its incredible beauty, but, reallty, it’s indescribable. Trying to put into boundaries of language is akin to the inevitable shortfalls that even the best poet-philosopher would encounter while describing being in love.  I was truly taken aback by what I saw, and I have seen a lot of beauty in this marvelous world.  All of a sudden, in the perfect silence that was abound, an owl, thrown off by sudden onset of darkness, hooted twice nearby. This brought me back to reality, and I remembered that I still had a sensitized plate to expose, so I snapped this with my phone before making the last few steps toward my optical apparatus.  

 Two seconds into my last exposure the sun made its reappearance, at which point I promptly places the lens cap back on, and hurried back to the dark box in order to promptly develop the plate and see if anything came out. As I developed the negative, and through the red windows of my box saw daylight returning rapidly to Earth, I was gradually rewarded by seeing an image appear before me, and within a minutes and a half I had my negative secured. A bit later, after a good wash, I used one cycle of iodine redevelopment to boost density just a bit in order to print it via gelatin silver with lithographic developer. Here’s the negative still being rinsed, and then dried and held against dark background, and so shown there as overexposed positive  

 My exposures were 4-6 seconds, and the lens was being used in a configuration that gave me an approximate focal length of 2100mm and f11. At this magnification, the sun moves rather quickly across the plate; and so any longer of an exposure would have significantly blurted the image, in all past images with these techniques tracking devices were used for this reason. With such short maximum exposures a combined with relatively slow speed of my lens, I really didn’t expect much of anything to show up on my daguerreotype plates, I took the whole exercise as, quite literally, a shot in the dark.  Working with daguerreotypes is not easy under any conditions, but doing it from a car on location truly does add a whole extra set of difficulties, including judging fuming colors as well as image during development. At first I didn’t see any discernible image on any of my daguerreotype plates.  While being somewhat disappointed (I couldn’t have been too mad, I just saw totality and I knew I had a wet plate negative in the rinse), I decided to not fix out the plates, and carefully placed them back in their holders, in order to later take a better look at them back home, in hope that I’m missing something. Indeed, upon fixing followed by careful inspection in the darkroom, I found that all six plates had depictions upon them. Some were stronger than others, but there was image on all tries. This made the mission of capturing totality on both mediums truly complete, and so I gilded three of the best plates and here is a rather poor copy of one of them. 

 I’m still not a hundred percent sure of how I will finalize these three plates, and of the choices I’ll make while making lith prints from the collodion negative, but I’ll be sure to post an update on this post once it’s all finalized. I’ll likely meditate on that for a while, and let the plates themselves lend me a suggestion or two.  As of now, I’m glad I tried this, and I’m over the moon that I got results with these venerable photographic techniques.  

Good light to all, 

Anton 

Chess - Contemporary Daguerreotype Series

 Daguerreotype Chess Series

 During the summer of 2021, I found my interest for the game of chess revived with a new sense of vigor.  I learned the game as a child in Russia, but haven’t played much in the last two decades.  Early roots of chess stretch back 1500 years, and the game is simultaneously poetically elegant and surgically precise.  Throughout history, chess was often used to teach military tactics and to aid in development of strategic thinking.  With seemingly straightforward universal rules, it offers each player’s creativity room to develop a deeply personal style.  There is also an element of art in a well-executed chess game; it is a thing of pure beauty, akin to an imperial Faberge egg.  The more I played recently, the more I realized that the game of chess in many ways parallels the art of making daguerreotype images.  In order to yield timeless results, both operations rely on planning and high degree of precision.  While both pursuits have rather stringent and limited rules, both offer an absolutely infinite range of possibilities achievable with same starting toolkit, and a good result in both is a manifestation of skill level of each individual artist of player.  Of course the game of chess is played against an opponent, and it is a battle of two minds.  The process of making a daguerreotype is a solitary pursuit, where one uses skill combined with imagination to battle natural elements like humidity and light and to build silver particles in just the right way to distill and translate a beautiful ephemeral vision or idea.

  There’s one key difference between chess and daguerreotype that deserves a closer examination; it was in fact that difference that inspired me to start making modern daguerreotypes in ways varied from tradition.  Checkmate positions are quite self-evident, while an uninspired poorly made daguerreotype takes quite a bit of extra thinking to recognize.  The game of chess evolved over fifteen centuries, and is more popular today than even.  New approaches to strategy have had plenty of time to sprout, organically replacing the old ways because they led to winning positions on the board.  Today, the sophistication exhibited by the top players is truly masterful, and the level of play is still constantly progressed.  Millions of people around the world play chess and keep sharing and building communal knowledge.  On the other hand, fewer than twenty people today make contemporary daguerreotypes on at least somewhat consistent basis. During the 1840 and ‘50s, when daguerreotype reigned as the supreme photographic method and tens of millions of images were produced, strong competition demanded photographers to pursue higher and higher quality outputs.  Some 19th century artists sought ways to make their images have personal innovative styles, and a few intriguing explorations into artistic realms were indeed made by those rare individuals.  However, a combination of several factors played a role in those early bursts of innovation not being pursued to their fullest possible extent: the short period during which daguerreotype method was practiced before being replaced by a cheaper and easier collodion method, the overwhelming mass demand of the time for purely representative images, the fact that serious discussion of photography as an independent art form was yet naturally in its infancy.  All that and more resulted in this incredible medium being basically frozen in time.  It is by no means easy to make a perfect representational daguerreotype in the ways of the old masters, and so most who attempt to do so today simply strive for those results, reaching happy homeostasis once a certain level of consistency has been achieved.  Even the most adventurous contemporary daguerreotypists of today are simply revisiting the century-old ideas of abstraction, or simply going for larger and larger image surfaces.  It is as if the status quo of daguerreotype method has been established in a simplified form; it seems that given a chessboard most are happy to stick to checkers.

  While chess is a very Zen activity, photography has always been the fuel to my passion for life.  I play chess as a hobbyist and don’t expect to ever draw a game against Magnus Carlsen, but looking for ways to take my images to the new heights, ones yet unimagined and unexecuted by anyone, is a constant insatiable urge.  Incredulous at what vast uncharted territories are still left untouched within the daguerreotype medium, I continually express my experience of existence through art.  These seven images were conceived and executed in order to highlight the relationship between the infinitely complex and beautiful worlds of chess and daguerreotype.

 

 

 

 

 

Anton