Amazing still life from 1860 by Roger Fenton who worked to promote photography as art.

Wet plate collodion photography seems to be having a bit of a revival these days, and I have a number of friends working with that media. I’ve tried it, taking a workshop from Alan Barnes, and there’s a lot of skill required. Beyond getting good chemistry, there’s an art to the pouring and exposure that can only be mastered by few. It’s rare to see a complete plate without flaws, and getting good dynamic range is hard. That’s why IRead more

Oh no! Learn from my mistakes

Lesson Learned!  Don’t use fibrous blotter paper to dry your prints in neat little stacks or notebooks! And definitely don’t use any fibrous material to wipe your prints dry either.  Perhaps there are better ways to speed up drying?  I was looking for more images to add to my direct positive portrait gallery and came across this old scan.  It was taken in 2013 while trying out the Harman Direct Positive Paper with my Linhof 13×18 Technika III.     Do youRead more

Traditional darkroom print vs Inkjet print of scan

In a previous post, I shared some scans of images I took at the ghost mining town with my Hy6 and 40mm Schneider PQ lens with Ilford Delta 3200 film.   I made some very nice traditional darkroom prints from these negatives that I was quite happy with.  I really liked the look of them a lot.  The printing paper I used was some very old Ilfobrom 3F fiber based paper that a friend had given me.  I could have been olderRead more