Well, another great photography forum has closed. Collodion.com has shut down. Quinn decided to close it.

The history is that there was a tintype re-enactors website run by Bob Szabo back in the early 2000s. At that time, wetplate was almost a forgotten art, but a few people were resurrecting it, almost all of them doing Civil War battlefield tintypes. I discovered the forum and was instantly thrilled. I had an Epiphany that wetplate collodion would be just the new skill for me to learn - difficult, esoteric, and fairly rare for people to do. Another forum was just starting in 2005, without the re-enactor concentration (using authentic cameras, lenses, dark boxes so you would fit in on the battlefields). It was Collodion.com. Quinn Jacobson had done a wetplate series of inner city people that was well received. He became the standard bearer on the internet (a few others, like Coffer, didn't do things online at all). He moved to Europe and for several years taught hundreds of photographers there how to do collodion. It grew more and more, becaming VERY big by 2010. He created the World Wetplate Day, which funded a new headstone for the grave of Frederick Archer, the inventor of wetplate. He did demos at the Bievre Foto Fair. I joined him. I made a lot of friends on both forums. Wetplate became my life for many years. I traveled to Europe, moderated the Collodion.com forum, sold lenses and cameras.

What a long, strange trip it's been. Facebook has taken over most dedicated forums. You loose a lot on Facebook. There is no organization of topics, for example. On Collodion, we had troubleshooting sections, equipment, common problems, formulas, and more, all organized and a click away. Today, on Facebook wetplate groups, you have the same questions asked over and over, because the answers get pushed off the page by any new content. So "what fixer do I use?" get's asked 14 times a week. With different answers by unknown people, conflicting answers, arguments. Then 3 days later, it gets asked again. Basically it's like taking a guidebook and club of experts, and tearing it into little pieces in front a fan, letting a crowd on the sidewalk catch the pieces and try to make sense of it.

Don't let it happen to LF Forum. I've seen about 5 great hobby forums die the past few years.