BORUT PETERLIN in a rabbit hole of photography

Today I’ve made four more portraits of my family. I started with my grandmother and after I developed the glass plate, I grabbed a bottle for which I thought is a fixer, but I realized that it’s not and I’ve learned that it’s not good to keep fixer in the same kind of bottle as distilled water. I washed developer away sit in a car and drove home that was 15 min away. I was driving like it’s an emergency, I was saving an image after all!!! Next portrait was from my wife. She blinked and she didn’t had time or patience to repeat the shot. When I was drying plate above the fire, the glass broke. But it cracked really nicely and this coincidence on the end made the picture! Last two are portraits of my parents.

I’m quite happy with my progress in Wet Plate photography process, I just need to work a bit more with flashes. I have few options in mind that might work better. I used:
Wet Plate Collodion, glass plate format 5×7″ glass plate, lens: Carl Zeis Tessar 250mm f/4,5. Illuminated by two studio flashes of joined power of 2250 Ws.

How do you like this portraits?
Rate, comment and Rock&Roll!

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Danes sem naredil še par portretov moje družine. Začel sem z babico in po razvijanju steklene plošče, sem jo hotel fiksirati, a ugotovil, da ni dobro imeti fiksirja v enaki steklenici kot destilirano vodo, se pravi, nisem imel fiksirja pri sebi. Vsedel sem se v avto in dirjal domov, kot bi bil rešilec. Pa saj sem reševal fotko, kaj ni to dober vzrok za nujno vožnjo?!? Naslednji potretiranka je bila moja žen, ki pa je med ekspozicijo tako na muč zamižala. Bil sem kar nejevoljen, še posebej, ker ni imela ne časa ne volje, da bi portret ponovili. No, ko sem lakiral portret, je steklo počilo in to na tak način, da je dejansko super izpadlo. Ne bi mogel bolje te črte potegniti!

Ob koncu dneva sem kar zadovoljen z napredkom v tej tehniki fotografije 19. stoletja. Morda vidim še kar nekaj potenciala z lučmi, oziroma bliskavicama, moram preizkusiti še par opcij.
Na koncu statistika:
Tehnika mokri kolodij na steklo, format 12 x 16,5 cm, objektiv Zeis Tessar, 250mm f/4,5, osvetljeno z dvema studijskima bliskavicama v skupni moči 2250 Ws. Ne pozabite ozvezdit ta zapis in kakopak komentirat!
Rok in rol,
B5

After a month in Wet Plate Collodion 19th Century photography, I’ve learned quite a lot. My results are far from perfect, but I did paddle through mistakes that you can make in this process and no doubt many more are expected to come. Here are some newer results. Plates are dirty, I know. As a beginner I don’t have a proper silver bath (like that) and I’m using normal photo trays which results in a lot of dust and particles. I was filtering a lot in the beginning but after a month the level of silvernitrate has fallen from 250ml to 150ml and the fluid bearly covers a plate, so no filtering before I don’t get a new silver nitrate.

Portraits of children with dark background are illuminated by two flashes of joint power of 2250 Ws. I needed only one burst at aperture of f/4,5. Last time I was going crazy with proper illumination of a plate with joint power of 67.500 Ws, but I made a big mistake since I was using soft-boxes. Soft box filters UV light and since collodion is sensitive to blue-violet and ultra violet light, I needed so much power last time. This time I used without softboxes. Anyway I hope you will like it. Rate, comment and rock & roll!

Multipraktik is a creative collective and this is how we shot their portrait. This portrait was actually produced by Multipraktik group. Usually I take care about everything for the shoot, but this time guys did a fantastic work, from an idea to taping a studio in protecting plastic sheets, not to mention the sacrifice Luckily I have quite some experience with this kind of splashing shoots as you can see it HERE or HERE. Commissioned by Mladina weekly. LINK to a series of my creative portraits.

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Readers of my blog (and everybody that meet me) knows about my adventure into 19th Century photography. Until now I was limited to my Kodak Folding Brownie, but I was looking for proper large format view camera that will work with glass plates in wet plate collodion technique. I searched on many websites, places and talked to many colleagues, but yesterday morning I woke up with a memory that I know a store where there used to be a view camera standing in a corner. I was probably wrong, but since I was in Ljubljana I drove down to the store. I was shocked to see it in the corner waiting for me
I thought it will be a wooden camera, but since it was made out of metal, I was sure it’s using normal film holder, but to my surprise it had a wooden back with adaptors for various formats. Camera is manufactured by Idro Celje from Slovenia, a company that doesn’t exist anymore, but obviously they were making bulletproof cameras for usage in reprography. I named it Panzer camera as it reminds me on Panzer IV tank. It uses a 25cm Carl Zeiss lens and it’s interesting how aperture is marked. There is no f stop, just the size of radios of the aperture. I never saw a lens like that. It’s meant for a work in reprography so you can not screw it on a normal tripod. Today we had a chance visit of a family friend that makes stuff from metal and I asked him to make an adapter for this camera. With the adapter I will be able to photograph outside on a normal tripod. Life is smooth when I’m tuned in photography

I’ve bought 2mm glass that was cut on format of 12 x 16,5 cm and without really learning how to properly clean the glass and prepare it for collodion layer, I started with spilling collodion and the rest of Wet Plate Collodion ritual. I’ve made a set up with my cameras (Kiev – my first camera) and exposed it with two Balcar flashes with joint power of 2250 Ws. I was shocked how much light I needed to properly exposed it. I needed 30 bursts and if my math is correct it emitted 67.500 Ws. And my collodion is young like three weeks, so it should needed less light then an old collodion. Perhaps flash is emitting very little UV light upon which collodion is most sensitive on. I don’t know, I have much to learn. Anyway I’m overwhelmed with my first glass plate and I made also a contact print on a normal resin coated silver-bromide paper. Easy Sparky I’m not that far to make albumen prints, at least not yet. After first success I noticed that collodion is starting to peel of the glass. I know… It’s not good to skip lessons in photography, but hey, it’s fun nevertheless!
PS: My daughters love the magic box as we call the camera

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I’m a beginner in Wet Plate Collodion process and I was blogging about a workshop that I took in Serbia (link). When I came home I was trying to make a good picture, but without success. I mean I’ve made this portrait, but you see the picture only because I scanned it and corrected the contrast and curves. Mišo Keskenović was telling me that my collodion is young and therefore lacking contrast. I knew it’s not only young collodion, but I didn’t had a constant working conditions, results were everywhere from bad ones to un-recognizible ones. But now I made myself a darkroom I can use on the field. I bought second hand Fujifilm darkroom and cut two holes in it and made a hood for it. It’s tight, but it works perfectly. Well I’ll try it out tomorrow outside, but it will work for sure.

Today I’ve made a tests trying to establish a correct exposure. I reckoned that I was overexposing my shots and then cutting the developing time and I had correct density of silver, but it was so uncontrasty the motif was barely recognizable. Now I decided to establish the correct exposure with studio flash, so I will have constant light during the test. First I tried on an old and dirty tinplate and I cut down exposure. Immediately I noticed it’s underexposed but with nice contrast. On the next tintype plate I spread collodion perfectly and illuminated it with four flash bursts of 1500Ws each. The result above is as you see it. No postproduction with curves and stuff. Actually if you see it live, it’s amazing, because you’re looking at pure silver and the image is incredibly sharp. Really! You can not get the sharpness like that with any Hasselblad, because the lens is projecting directly on the tintype without any interference of film negative. Of course just dead center is razor sharp.

My estimation is that if I set f/11 on my Kodak Folding Brownie the exposure time should be somewhere like a light meter would be set at aperture f/32, ISO 25. I will try my theory tomorrow and I’ll post the result. My collodion is now three weeks old. If it’s 1-3 months old it gives best results, but the exposure time is prolonged with aging of collodion. And apparently wet plate collodion is most sensitive on UV light, so reading with conventional lightmeter is only an estimate. FUN!

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I’m proud to present my new photo-movie on theater performance Dom za igralce, directed by Matjaž Farič and produced by Anton Podbevšek Teater. I’ve shot tons of photographs and then I was asked to make a teaser that will include also video. It’s challenging to make a video and I know what weakness and advantages are if you are shooting video with a video camera or if you’re making it with a photo-camera (nikon D3s and D7000). I was checking videos from other theater performances, but I soon decided I’ll make my own narrative. I mixed ambient sound from the performance, clean studio sound recording from the performance, an interview with the theater director Matjaž Farič, video recording from the performance and last but not least, photographs. I am foremost a photographer
How do you like it? Does it work? I know if you don’t speak the proper language it’s hard to get the full impression, but still.

Rate, comment, rock and roll!

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Mladina made a redesign and from now on I have a square format for my portraits. It’s a stable composition and I have a prejudice that is a dull format, but I’ll see what can I do. I’m delighted to present a portrait of Meta Krese. Meta Krese is an editor, journalist and a photographer. As a journalist she made a critical reportage on life of a Roma in Slovenia. It was published in National Geographic magazine, Slovenian edition and accompanied by photographs of Arne Hodalič. Meta won a very important european journalistic prize “Writing for CEE” from Unicredit Bank with this story. Actually we both visited a location together near Semič. HERE is my post about that visit and I’m publishing an image of them working and Meta’s image of me, teaching Roma how to take pictures.

I’ve made a portrait of Meta four years ago and you can see it HERE. With yesterday’s square portrait I’m quite satisfied. What do you think? Rate, Comment…

HERE is a link to a video from Vienna.
Here is a link to an article in Slovenian.
HERE is a link to Unicredit Bank announcement.

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For this, Friday’s issue of Mladina weekly I’ve made a creative portrait of Aljaž Vindiš ex-editor in chief of Tribuna student magazine with a wet plate collodion technique and everybody that I’ve showed this image loved it, execept editors of Mladina weekly. They asked me to submit also digital version of the image and I had only a crappy image that I’ve shot just as a test before my “real” portrait. I don’t want to fight, so I submitted certainly the worst portrait I’ve ever done, in good faith this will never go through, but against every expectation, this was chosen by editors. I apologize to people that follow my portraits in Mladina, I feel embarrassed that my name stands under this. Mladina made a redesign and devote a whole page for my portrait, but it is a square and I have many problems with it. I thought I found a solution, wet plate collodion definitely inspired me, but now this concept is rejected ruthlessly and I don’t have a new one. What I want’s to say is that I’ll try to reinvent my portraits, I’ll do my job, but it’s different to do a portrait if you do it as a job…

On other hand, if you want to hire me to do portraits in Wet Plate Collodion I’m available to hire. My contact is on my site.