Posts Tagged ‘landscapephotography’
Flooded tree in wet plate collodion negative
A flooded tree by river Krka. This is a digital scan from Wet Plate Collodion negative, format 5×7″. Photograph taken with (modified) Plaubel Peco camera and Voigtlander Heliar 300mm, f4.5, lens. Exposure 10 seconds at f/16.
Two days ago I saw this flooded tree and I knew immediately it will look good on picture, but there was too much water, I couldn’t come near the tree. Yesterday I saw the water level has fallen, but didn’t had time to make the picture and on other hand I knew the flood will be gone by tomorrow, so today I decided to make the picture. Only problem was that I had to work in Ljubljana, to make half a dozen on location portraits for Mladina weekly. OK, I did it with digital camera, but still a lot of work. I decided I have an hour to make the collodion image, no more. I drove to the place, set up the tent, made a test and then also the plate. All that in 42 minutes. I cleaned the set up and head to digital work.
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.
#TreeTuesday 18.12.2012
I’m joining #TreeTuesday group on social network as an excuse to take more images. Today’s wetplate is done with Kodak Folding Brownie 3A from year 1905.
Wet Plate Collodion photography in the morning at 4C (39F)
This morning it was temperature 4C (39F) and it was perfect to try out how does Wet Plate Collodion process work at this temperature. I had an alcohol burner (not my liver) with which I could heat up chemicals if I would need to, but it was surprisingly not needed. I did prolonged time of sensitizing a plate from 3min to 6 min and developing was a bit longer, but that was the only difference of usual procedure. I photographed an old apple tree that was sunbathing.
I used my Kodak Folding Brownie At my first exposure I didn’t fixed lens properly and it was out of focus. I repeated the shot, but I kind of like the un-fucused picture just as well. This two pics are tintypes then I repeat the shot, but I poured collodion on glass plate. I’m attaching a picture as a glass negative looks on a black velvet. That principle of backing a collodion negative with a black background it’s called an ambrotype. Check this negative bellow, half it’s on a black velvet and half is on a white paper. A pure magic, I tell you!
A video podcast an insight of my Tour de Dayton project
A video podcast an insight of my Tour de Dayton work in progress project.
