Wet Plate for Architectural & Portrait

[Tim Meisburger]

Sorry. Just a joke.

[jnantz]

I really thought this thread was a joke. The first posts related to it being a bot. I thought that was funny, and got a good laugh of of it. Back around 1973, I experimented with wet collodion long before it became popular at all. I even made my own nitrocellulose using nitric acid, salt peter, and cotton. Hence my mild interest in wet collodion. I completely gave up on this a few years later when I discovered ortho-litho film, which gives a very similar look without the fuss and bother and with greatly superior orthochromatic response. Historical side note: wet collodion continued to be used in the printing industry for half tones through the 1940's when ortho-litho film fully replaced it.

The only reason I can imagine today for using wet collodion is as historical reenactment. It wet collodion days, there were no enlargements digital or otherwise. Contact printed collodion on paper or albumen paper were about it. So now we have portrait studios using wet plates Frankenstined with later digital and optical processes? This makes no logical sense whatsoever. So, I guess it's okay to fake the historic retouching and printing processes with a genuine wet plate negative? Sorry that I don`t see any market. Most of the art was retouching the numerous pimples and blemishes that show up so badly with color blind emulsions. To me, a 1/2 non-historic process is fake, so fully fake isn't very far removed. Thus my literary license for my comment I get called names for. It was funny.

More people read this forum than just the OP's. Information is for everybody and the purpose of a forum. I remain amazed that people are using inferior materials (wet collodion) because they are hand made but then modernizing (faking) the results with commercial products that are mass-produced. Personally, my photography is all done using manufactured film but printed using hand-made materials without computer aids. This works better for me and is more historically correct for about 1880 on.

Hi Alan

there is very little use for anyone to be making chemical based photographs at all these days, except to enjoy oneself. the market for any kind of photography for sale is the same, it's the vanity-market, and with wet plate it is also to cheat death. people who have money to spend will buy a handmade photograph, it's an "art object".

[paulbarden]

I really thought this thread was a joke.

The only reason I can imagine today for using wet collodion is as historical reenactment.

Thus my literary license for my comment I get called names for. It was funny.

I remain amazed that people are using inferior materials (wet collodion) because they are hand made but then modernizing (faking) the results with commercial products that are mass-produced. Personally, my photography is all done using manufactured film but printed using hand-made materials without computer aids. This works better for me and is more historically correct for about 1880 on.

1) Obviously this query is not a joke. That should have been evident after the first few posts.

2) Just because your concept of "appropriate usage" (IE; historical reenactments) is so limited doesn't mean others have not used wet plate to excellent effect and find it a very creative medium.

3) You think this is funny, and yet nobody is laughing. All you've done is piss people off. Think about that.

4) Your opinion that wet plate collodion is "an inferior material" doesn't actually make it inferior. People make excellent images using plastic "toy" cameras, pinhole cameras, using materials outside the narrow scope of "historically accurate" (a term that only has meaning to the practitioner. You think anyone else cares??) so how YOU make your images and the fact that you're using "historically correct" processes is irrelevant.
The snobbery that so often leaks into this forum is discouraging, when people snub others for not "doing things the right way" (whatever the f that means). It's no wonder you got called names for expressing such a nonconstructive, unfriendly opinion that did nothing to help the OP.

[Eugen Mezei]

Historical side note: wet collodion continued to be used in the printing industry for half tones through the 1940's when ortho-litho film fully replaced it.

The only reason I can imagine today for using wet collodion is as historical reenactment.

I remain amazed that people are using inferior materials (wet collodion)

One area where collodion was used for a long time (up to the 2000s years) and even today (although on a much reduced scale) is for printing onto china. In my town a shop exist that makes funeral pictures on china. For who does not know, these are mostly photographs of the deceased onto a round or oval glased ceramic (aka china) and are attached to the tombstone. Very durable. I did know the shop from the times I was a child, but never entered it. I always saw these ceramic pictures in their showcase. After I got intereste in LF photography I also noted the two LF cameras they had. Than one day I saw one dissapeared. I entered the shop and asked what happened with it and if they maybe are selling their gear. (I then indeed bought the one that "dissapeared", a 13x18 Globica.) The woman doing the work explained me (but not willing to give all the details) how these plaquettes are made. She complained about two things: 1. Industrially produced collodion being hard to come by (and if only of bad, thin quality), 2. Decreasing sales. (That is why they sold one of the cameras and are now in half of the shop selling womens underwear.) On the one side people are not interested any more in these plaquettes for tumbstones, on the other side the technique is replaced by printing; that is cheaper and can produce also color photographs. (To be honest I doubt they are very long lasting, but I only suppose.)

[Eugen Mezei]

expressing such a nonconstructive, unfriendly opinion that did nothing to help the OP.

It may seem polite and for sure easy to do when you don't have to open your own pocket to help the OP, but confirming him into a dream that very well could end with an unpleasant awaking is not something I would call constructive.

[Eugen Mezei]

I know scores of people who operate a very profitable wet plate portraiture studio. I don't think it's very helpful to suggest making fake tintypes, especially since you've stated that you don't have any idea what is happening in the wet plate portraiture market (believe me, it's a booming market).
The business model the OP is proposing is very viable, assuming they learn the technique properly and develop skill with it, and that they have a genuine desire to make the business work. As I say, I know plenty of people who operate tintype portrait studios and they are BUSY people, making a living doing it.

If a second shop opens that is booming (100% increase) but that must not mean the market will support a third one. Maybe even the second one will have to close soon, even if the first one was very successfull.
These old processes gained a bit of notorierity and even following customers, but you still have to gather enough people willing to pay enough so it sustain your living. How many people are willing to pay at least the cost of material? How many are willing to do it regularily and not just once for the sake of novelty?

[jnantz]

Hi Eugen
I can't speak as a regular practitioner of wet plate, I've done it a handful of times, but from all reports from people who were cranking out tintypes regularly ( at least in the US ) it costs less than a negative and silver print to make a tintype, enlargements from a lab don't cost that much. I at present, sheet film and paper is spendy, and is no longer a bargain like the days of yore ( not that anything was ever inexpensive ). It's an important skill to have, being able to be self sufficient in making photographic supplies materials, especially with the days numbered for store bought materials .. not to be a photographic doomsday profiteer but who knows how expensive film and paper will get before hobby people and fine artists alike can't afford to spend the big bucks on film &c and once that happens .... I mean it used to be that someone could even buy outdated / expired film and paper on the cheeps, but the cat's out of the bag for that too ... it is what it is ... I've seen some very large image from metal / glass made by a printer's shop and they looked absolutely beautiful. Bigger is better and all that, and if small and jewel like is wanted even better .. regarding novelty, photography in general is a novelty, I mean anyone can point a camera and push a button or snatch a still from their go-pro stream, barely tweak it in gimp and make something worthy of a wall, seeing something from someone else's point of view is always less of a novelty.

[maaccretouch54]

Exciting wet plate studio plans! For city exhibitions, consider a lens balancing sharpness and vintage charm. How do you plan to handle post-processing? Embrace plate imperfections or use photo editing to enhance? Curious about your creative process!

[Tin Can]

I have bought way more X_Ray than I may live to use

I like the 1895 LOOK

I never spot as I am careful, I scan by iPad now for LFPF SHARING

NAY SAYYAYERS POST THOSE MASTERPIECES

FOR SHOW AND HELL

45 plastic injection cam hand heid 4 am one flash bulb

Turbo by TIN CAN COLLEGE, on Flickr