Leftovers: portraits

Friday, January 21, 2011

tin types

Last weekend, I went down to Corona to do a wet collodion workshop. This was the photo process before film which includes tin types and wet collodion glass plates (negatives & positives).

The workshop was taught by William Dunniway, a renowned tin typist, wet collodion enthusiast, civil war re-enactment photographer, and nice guy. There were only 3 students total: a friend I work with (Kim Kosai) who actually told me about the workshop, a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer for the New York Times (Angel Franco), and myself. In addition, two gentlemen by the names of Ted and James, helped out with the workshop while everything was held together by Will's wife Frances, who was in charge of the food...us photo people can get very cranky and nasty after being in the darkroom for long hours without eating - we often forget or fail to recognize the need for energy and sustenance via meals.

It lasted two days and it was a riot. There were funny stories, dirty jokes, not too many 'oops' moments, and at the end an overall satisfaction and wonderment in learning a new process...the only problem being now that I want to continue doing tin types, or making glass plate negatives for platinum printing...all that shit's expensive and it will take a lot of ordering and getting things fine-tuned before I'll be ready...so maybe by summer, I can take civil war esque photos of ye'alls.

Here are the prints I made - both are tin types and Will was nice enough to focus and make the exposures on this sweet old 1850s camera:

formal (for mom)

casual (trying to look like an angry urchin diver)

Thursday, October 28, 2010

portraits at sea

so i have this old mamiya c33 camera - it shoots medium format film and i believe it's older than i...but it takes damn crisp photos. this might be the best crew ever for a long boat trip...at least the most photogenic.