Portrait of Tanja Radež with Wet Plate Collodion technique
Tanja Radez, a graphic designer
Here is yesterday’s portrait of Tanja Radež, a graphic designer. It will be published in Friday’s Mladina weekly. I portrayed her in park Tivoli in downtown of Ljubljana, Slovenia. It looks like she’s illuminated with some sort of soft lights, but she’s not. It’s just a diffuse light in a shade. I asked her to sit on the first stairs of the staircase, so there was a lot of light from the (northern) sky. I used a 4×5″ camera with a Linhof 135mm f/3,5 lens and exposure was 6 seconds. Look at the background at the top of the image. I love the bookeh of this lens. It’s just a poetry!
All my Wet Plate Collodion chemicals were in a cold box, to keep the temperature down and I add a small spoon of sugar to my developer, to prolong the developing time. Finally I’m getting good results during summer temperatures. I was photographing at -17C and it was no problem (aside that I was cold), but during summer it’s crazy to develop collodion plates. Well problem solved and my time machine will work on full power 
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Tukaj je včerajšnji portret Tanje Radež, oblikovalke. Objavljen bo v petkovi Mladini. Portretiral sem jo v parku Tivoli, v Ljubljani. Izgleda, kot bi bila osvetljena s kako mega mehko lučjo, a je nisem doosvetljeval. Samo prosil sem jo, da sede na prve stopnice, kjer je bila svetloba severnega neba najlepša, najbolj difuzna in dokaj močna. Uporabil sem svojo 4×5″ kamero z objekivom Linhof 135mm f/3,5 in ekspozicija je bila 6 sekund. Poglejte neostrino v zgornjem robu fotografije. Kako obožujem ta bookeh objektiva! Čista poezija.
Vse moje kemikalije so bile v hladilni torbi in v razvijalec sem dal žličico sladkorja, da bi s tem podaljšal čas razvijanja. Končno dobivam dobre rezultate v poletnem vremenu! Sem že fotografiral pri -17C in ni bilo problema, razen tega, da me je zeblo, a razvijat plošče pri poletnih temperaturah je norišnica. No, sedaj je problem rešen in moja časovna mašinca dela na polno!
