Getting that result on a tintype

[YHP]

Hello,

Can you give me some advice on how to achieve that special effect on a tintype?

Thank you!!

[Bill_1856]

lacquer it.

[Tracy Storer]

I suggest you try the Collodion forum, those just look like funky pours to me, but I'm no expert. The great irony of the Collodion renaissance is that defects and artifacts that would have caused a 19th C worker to reject a plate are very popular now, and hailed as the hallmarks of the process. I have a small collection of vintage plates, mostly portraits, and they are all very very clean. Muybridge, Watkins, Weed, etc, even Julia Margaret Cameron, who was notoriously not the best technical practitioner, would have rejected the vast majority of todays plates as a matter of course.
Don't get me wrong, I walk both sides of this particular street. Good luck achieving the look you're after !

[vinny]

Sloppy work, that's how.

[YHP]

Thanks!

lacquer it.

[YHP]

That's what I thought, but wasn't sure. Thank you

[YHP]

got it, thanks!

[C. D. Keth]

What effect are you talking about? The plates you posted have a host of problems and I don't know which one you like.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Sloppy work, that's how.

+1

[Monty McCutchen]

It has nothing to do with the lacquer. It has everything to do with dirty plates, dirty plate holders not cleaned out well, and as mentioned above sloppy work and poor methodology. Maybe done on purpose most likely not. As Tracy stated it would have been rejected years ago and if you have been at this any amount of time at all, most likely rejected today by a good practitioner, at least it would be by me. I don't mind some artifacts but when they dominate the entire picture it looks more like a science project to me "Look I got a picture to come up!!" Which can be fine as a necessary step to good work later in our growth, just not as our final resting place. Wet Plate is one of the few photographic process's where practitioners aren't held to the standards of excellence of both vision and craft. I've stated before but will again, I'll be glad when the fad of wet plate ends and it can be judged for one syntax of photographic language with a visual vocabulary all it own but one that still needs to be honored with a desire to achieve a skillful end where vision and craft come together to an artful finished piece of work.

Monty

[YHP]

For the guy that holds its hand to his chest, I like the bottom right corner, at the level of the ring, looks like a large brush stroke

[YHP]

And for the guy with glasses, the right side, very close to the edge of the plate, looks like a liquid poured that takes about half of the plate.

[dsphotog]

I'd be surprised if there isn't a computer "app" to replicate this look.
Remember "sloppy borders" to copy the filed out neg carrier look?

[Mark Sawyer]

I recognized these from Victoria Will's Sundance celebrity portraits:

http://www.mrmovie-review.com/fun-stuff/fun-stuff-photographer-puts-1860s-twist-celebrity-snapshots/

As has been said, a celebration of bad technique.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

It has nothing to do with the lacquer. It has everything to do with dirty plates, dirty plate holders not cleaned out well, and as mentioned above sloppy work and poor methodology. Maybe done on purpose most likely not. As Tracy stated it would have been rejected years ago and if you have been at this any amount of time at all, most likely rejected today by a good practitioner, at least it would be by me. I don't mind some artifacts but when they dominate the entire picture it looks more like a science project to me "Look I got a picture to come up!!" Which can be fine as a necessary step to good work later in our growth, just not as our final resting place. Wet Plate is one of the few photographic process's where practitioners aren't held to the standards of excellence of both vision and craft. I've stated before but will again, I'll be glad when the fad of wet plate ends and it can be judged for one syntax of photographic language with a visual vocabulary all it own but one that still needs to be honored with a desire to achieve a skillful end where vision and craft come together to an artful finished piece of work.

Monty

I agree with Monty 100%. Even though I do not practice Wet plate I have seen a lot. Luther Gerlach, Tri Tran and others. Quality technique is recognizable. Bad plates are bad plates. The public sees this and thinks it is cool, the way it is done. In my opinion is is terrible because when people see quality work by real craftsmen they think something is wrong with it!