Software For Wet Plate Look

[Marko]

I also see no problem with it; if you can make a really nice image using capture + digital effects, good for you.

There are all kinds of different photographic philosophies out there spanning the gamut from pure digital artwork to stuff like wet plate and tintype. Do what you enjoy.

This is precisely the point.

The difference, and one wet plate users should be proud of, is that a wet plate image is a hand-crafted physical object. I don't doubt that a digital plug-in could replicate the appearance of a wet plate image (in digital form), but it can never replicate the original physical object. Same with a cyanotype or any other type of print. You can replicate it digitally but the point of the original technique is that it is a real physical object produced in a physical/chemical way.

No point getting all upset over mimicry.

I don't see the need to get upset at all. Over what? Because someone likes the look of your work and would like to achieve something similar but using different methods? Seriously?

I really don't understand all this obsession with "handcrafted physical objects" - to me, photography is all about the image, the one both created and drawn by light. Everything else is just presentation. It is that slice of time isolated from the continuum that will never repeat itself again in a single image that draws my attention, not the material it is pasted on. The material is just a print.

But if making things with your hands is what moves you, that's perfectly fine too, as long as you don't turn it into a fetish or a cult and start harassing others for their "deviation".

Marko

P.S. Walter, just to make it clear after re-reading it - the "you" is a figurative, not you personally...