A cold, but good wetplate day (no April fools joke :-)
Today was a good day. I was preparing yesterday several hours, cleaning plates, subbing them with albumen, calibrating chemicals, mixing fresh developer, getting gear together, nevertheless I succeed to forgot my plate holder at home, but luckily I’m shooting my neighborhood so I drove back home and picked it up. It was cold again! Zero degrees Celsius! I prepared stronger developer and for wetplate negative the sensitization was 7 minutes. I wanted to be eight, but I was getting some weird pimples on my plates. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s because of albumen, low temperature, collodion drying, thin collodion film, longer sensitisation in silvernitrate and stuff, I know, but lesson learned, for the next time I’ll be subbing only edges of plates with albumen.
I’ve done several plates, but with these two wetplate negatives and I’m very happy. Working in this conditions it’s hard, especially doing a negative, but the results that wetplate negative is delivering is justifying all the pain.
As you’ve noticed, I’ve redone the image of a tree trunk in the water. The image from the earlier post was done with Kodak Folding Brownie and I wasn’t satisfied, so this time I used my Schneider Kreuznach Tele-Xenar lens 500mm f/5.5. I like it a lot!
PS: By the way, this Saturday, 6th of April, I’m working in Josip Pelikan studio and if you want, I will make you a portrait.
Wet wetplate photographer
Weather is horrible everywhere and forecast is not promising, so when I saw that raining stopped for few hours, I packed my wetplate kit and head to the river Krka, to make new plates. In a month time I have an exhibition in Galerija Krka in Novo mesto, Slovenia, so I need to make a good use of every moment that is left. I had to work fast, so I decided to use my fuji darkbox and Kodak Folding Brownie 3A. I decided to go for wetplate negatives. It was quite cold, 4C degrees Celsius, so I was sensitizing plate for 7 minutes, but real problem was developing. The key to make a good negative is proper developing that goes from 1 to 3 minutes. I was developing in my dark-box, but while I was breathing, glass was starting to fog and after a minute I couldn’t see nothing, so I continued for a while, then I stopped. Consequentially negatives were weak. Then raining started again and I got all wet, but that’s appropriate for a wet plate photographer isn’t. At home I redeveloped the negative to build up some density. Now I’m looking the plates and I see the first one, that had a hole in the center of the image is actually more appealing then the second one that is technically better.
Before and after effect of redeveloping after fixing.
Interior design by Borut Peterlin
Workplace of digital (above) and analog photographer (bellow). Interior design by Borut Peterlin
Hey guys, we moved to our new house two and a half years ago and a year ago I changed my working room into darkroom. My modest opinion is that I have a huge talent for interior design and it’s comforting to know that if I will fail as a photographer I still can become a millionaire as an interior designer. In fact I know what you want to ask me, so my answer is YES, you can send me an email and we will discuss an option of you hiring me, but I must warn you I will not repeat the mistake that I’ve made as a photographer, talent like myself demands a grease fee! Here are few more details.
PS: In 2008 I’ve redesigned my old darkroom into sauna. I admit, that was a mistake, but as every great artist I learn on my mistakes.
A short clip from yesterday’s Photo-fair in Šempeter pri Gorici, Slovenia, EU
Boris Primožič, a photographer, portrayed in wet plate collodion technique by Borut Peterlin
Gregor Cokan, a photographer, portrayed in Wet plate collodion technique
On Saturday there was a photo-fair in Šempeter pri Gorici, Slovenia, EU and I presented my work and promote the revival of Studio Pelikan. It was fun, I’ve sold two cyanotypes and wet wetplate portraits, but more then that I’ve met many colleagues and friends. Here are two portraits that I’ve done on the location and on the bottom there is a short 46 seconds video how I was sharing my love.
A giant leap in my Wet Plate Collodion process / negative and ambrotype
I’m still working hard on Wet Plate Collodion process, but negative on glass, not positive – an ambrotype. Two days ago I gave myself a challenging task. To do a nice wetplate negative in challenging conditions. I set up my darkroom tent in a park near my house, choose one motif, two view cameras and devote eight hours to make a good ambrotype and a good negative. It’s still winter in this corner of the world (Slovenia,EU), so I mixed my chemicals for -1⁰C temperature, but in my tent there was + 5C, so developing was quite demanding. Nevertheless it was a good day. Very good!
Print for sale. Size 30x40cm, FomaBrom baryt paper, toned with sodium sulfide and sellenium toners. Bidding auction on ebay. [/caption] Today I’ve printed the wet plate negative, format 5×7″, on a classic gelatine photographic paper. I was doing tests what combination of paper, exposure and toning works best. I decided to go for split toning with sodium sulfide for highlights and selenium toner for shadows. The toning increases stability of silver, so it will remain like this for at least a century. This print was done on FomaBrom fiber based paper, size 30x40cm (12×16″). All process were done by museum archival standards. I’m selling this print on ebay – LINK. Still learning how this ebay works, so I’m opening a bidding auction. This goes for the first print in edition of 12. Rock and Roll!
How to locate a leaking problem in a view camera
My camera had a leaking problem and I’ve successfully locate it and fixed my camera. Now it’s working perfectly again! I lost lots of time with fixing my camera, but the hardest is to locate the leaking problem. I hope this video saved some time for you and for your camera’s leaking problem.
A portrait of a writer Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)
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Two weeks ago I was commissioned by Mladina weekly to do the portrait of a writer Irvine Welsh, a Scottish novelist, playwright and short story writer. He is recognised for his novel Trainspotting. For the whole interview a termin of 30 minutes was reserved, which with other words mean, not time for photographer. I’ve stole 30 seconds for the portrait in the chair, before the interview and the rest was shot during interview. I used medium twin-lens camera Mamiya C330 and EFKE 100 film (I should use ISO 400, I know…). I’ve done also portraits on digital camera, just as a back-up, but those portraits were so boring, I’ll not waste Internet’s space with them. The concept of those portraits was the following. I took a straight normal portrait, I took all classic portraits that are usually done during interviews, then I said OK, let’s make few portraits that will smell like Trainspotting. What do you think?
