2011 What a Year!

We all have hills and valleys in our lives, where we expand and learn, and then coast and idle. This is how it is for me anyway, I find myself working in creative bursts with what you could call "down time" or "recovery time" in between.

This year as a whole has been one amazing upswing. I experienced more growth and expanded my work to levels than I haven't in years- and it felt great! You all know the quote: "You only get out of it what you put into it." Well this year I put into it.

In February (on my birthday) I joined Model Mayhem. I have always wanted to do modeling work, and expanded my work into more creative portraiture this year. It has been a fantastic experience, I've met so many great people and made some really nice portrait work with all of you. Thanks!

Anastasia, from a recent modeling shoot in Terre Haute.

I shoot with lots of different and vintage camera equipment. I have 100 year old box cameras, 50 year old SLR's, and everything in between. I like to collect and use older functioning cameras to make photographs. It is a wonderful experience when you work with a camera that you are comfortable with, or are surprised at the results from a camera that has probably been collecting dust or sitting in a box for 50 years.

Kera Storrs, portrait made with a 100 year old Box Brownie

Film cameras have always been my comfort zone as an artist, and I have always seemed to struggle to be as creative with digital cameras. This year I worked really hard at trying to be as artistic and creative with digital as I have been with film in the past, and I think it paid off. I am now moving back and fourth between film and digital a lot easier, and am beginning to find my groove with digital cameras.

You think this would be easy since I have been shooting with digital SLR's since January of 2000. Before that I had, however, taken probably over 7000 rolls of film in 35mm cameras, not counting the sheet film burned in my large format cameras. I have a lot of film based photography experience :)

This summer I did a project where I shot with wet plate, film and digital on the same subject on the same day. This forced me to think the same way across three centuries of camera gear. It was awesome!

Danielle Palmer, made with my favorite SLR, my 40 year old Pentax SP-II

Jamie Siddons, taken with my digital SLR.

My main focus over previous years has been my work as a collodion artist at living history events. I really enjoy demonstrating and making images with the wet plate process with like minded folk at events throughout the summer. Unfortunately my "real job" had me working a lot of forced overtime work on the weekends. This had me miss a lot of events that I have been able to attend in the past. I was still able, however, to attend a few events and enjoyed myself a lot.

Two images made at the David Davis Mansion in Bloomington, Il.

I expanded my collodion work a little bit with some modeling work in wet plate. Collodion and modern portrait work just rocks! I had so much fun working this way, and I want to do more modern portrait work with wet plate and models this coming year.

Kayla Batchelor, 1/2 plate tintype.

Madi, 1/4 plate tintype portrait.

And finally, a sneak peak of a personal project I made in September of 2011. On the 10th anniversary of 9-11 I spent the day with the Champaign, Il fire department.  I made a series of tintype portraits in the shade of the fire station doors, in and around the fire equipment. It was a wonderful experience! I will have an exhibit of these images in March of 2012 and a companion book to go along with the exhibit, so stay tuned :)

 I hope everyone had a great 2011, and I look forward to a great 2012!

Message is a bottle

In September, the kids and I spent an hour or so on a bend in the Salt Fork river a few miles from our house. The river is higher in the spring and is lower in the summer and fall months.This particular spot is out in the middle of the river, and an is on the edge of an island of tree branches and brambles trapped together. The kids like to look for shells along the river banks, and this spot is always great for finding a plethora of shells of all kinds.

Logan looking for shells along the Salt Fork River. I made this picture with my Pentax SPII 35mm camera.

This year the water was exceptionally low. We haven't had a lot of rain this spring and summer, so lots of shells are exposed and laying around on what used to be the river bottom.

Among the shells, rocks and other things exposed by the low water was a bottle sticking out of the muck. It caught my eye, because it was a nice shade of teal blue thick glass. When I pulled it out I was surprised to see that it was still intact. After looking it over for a few minutes I was going to leave it be, but the "clean up nature" person inside me (and the curious historian) decided to pick it up and take it home.

Beautiful Dudenhofer bottle found in the mud in the Salt Fork River.

On the side of the bottle is written: "This Bottle Filled By Dudenhofer Bottling Co. Danville, ILL"

There isn't much on the Net about the Dudenhofer Bottling Company. A biography of George Dudenhofer states that he started the bottling company in 1901 in Danville. Another source from an article about these particular bottles states that the company ceased production of bottles at the Danville location in January of 1919.

This particular bottle has a large square "D" on the bottom of the bottle, but no date of manufacture anywhere on the glass. It is thick and irregular, and has whisps in the glass as well as some air bubbles trapped during the bottle making process.

It is a great little bottle! I can only imagine how it ended up empty, resting in the bottom of the Salt Fork River some time about 100 years ago. The amazing thing is that this bottle stayed together, and has hardly any signs of abuse at all.

When I find the time, I would love to do more research on the Dudenhofer Bottling Company in Danville. I imagine a trip to the library and some mircofilm is in order :) But then again, that to me is the fun part about finding a piece of history.

Balda Super Baldina: Shootin 1950's style

I received a text message from my good friend Anne. It read "What's a Balda?" She found this nice little chrome camera at the local Goodwill store, and wanted to tell me about it.

She sent along a picture with her text message. At first I thought it was a medium format camera, because it looked too big for 35mm. Well I was wrong, this cute little camera is actually a 35mm rangefinder camera from postwar Germany.

She said I would probably like shooting with it, so she sent it off to me to add to my antique camera collection. Thanks Anne!

As with anything in my life, first came the research on this camera. Tracking down the history of the camera is just part of the fun.

The camera was made by the Western Balda Company in the 1950's, and christened with the name Super Baldina. It has a collapsible lens that snaps into the camera body, and is a split image range finder camera. It was made in a few different versions. This version has one of the more common three element Baldanar 2.8 50mm lenses. If you would like to read more about this camera you can check out an article here.

The cute little 35mm Balda with the lens extended in the shooting position.

The camera came in half of it's original case, but it is in remarkably good shape. It probably sat around  for a while, but has wear marks which show that it was used quite a bit. The rewind knob on the left side of the camera has worn through the printed text on top of the dial from rewinding lots of film.

$6.38, not bad :)

You can see the wear marks from rewinding lots of film in this camera.

A sticker inside the camera from McCurry Foto Co. in Sacramento, California.

I cleaned the front elements of the lens, and cleaned the front and rear glass on the viewfinders and rangefinder windows. I did a run though on the shutter speeds and apertures. The slow speeds seemed a little off (slow) so I stuck to shutter speeds 1/60 and up to be on the safe side. The big question mark for this camera was the rangefinder. It is a series of mirrors that reflects light into the viewfinder, and allows you to superimpose two images together in order to focus the camera. Not knowing if the rangefinder was calibrated (or if the camera had been dropped down a flight of stairs in its lifetime), I put a roll of my favorite black and white film in the camera (Arista.edu Ultra 200 or Foma 200) and took it for a walk in the woods with the kids.

And the results: WOW! The camera is amazing. The rangefinder was in perfect calibration, as I made images both close up and far away to test out the focusing abilities. My biggest surprise was the sharpness of this lens. The photos are tack sharp, amazingly sharp to be honest, especially coming from a consumer grade camera from the 1950's.This camera is all metal and glass, no plastic and no batteries. It is very well made and worked flawlessly. Not bad for a 60 year old camera!

A picture of my kids perfectly focused, with out of focus elements in the foreground and background.

The lens did great with this closeup. And beautiful details in the whites of the flowers.

A landscape shot of the lake. I wish I would have had a red filter to punch up the clouds in the sky.

big camera for big tintypes :)

In 2007 I made a trip to New York with Mark Zimmerman to attend the wet plate jamboree at John Coffer's house. John is an amazing guy, and one of the people responsible for the resurgence of wet plate photography.

I brought along my new wet plate camera made for me by Ray Morgenweck of the Star Camera Company. My camera is a reproduction square bellows Anthony style camera. It is awesome, and since purchasing it new in 2007 I have made many plates with it.

My camera can only make images up to 1/2 plate (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") which is just fine for most of the work I do. I would have probably been content with this image size, but folks at the jamboree were using all sorts of camreas, including larger format camreas to make big tintypes and ambrotypes. Seeing large wet plate images in person is an amazing experience. I knew that I was eventually going to go bigger with my work.

Going big with wet plate means going big with a camera. Unfortunately most cameras have been out of my reach, and for the last four years or so I have been looking for an affordable way to make it happen. I was all set to start building my own 8x10 inch wet plate camera this winter when a beautiful old camera became available:

 

 This is a turn of the last century 8x10 Agfa Universal studio camera. A fellow wet plate photographer Christopher Morgan was selling it on one of the wet plate forums. It is large and in charge, with huge front and rear standards. This gracefully beautiful camera has seen a lot of use over the years. It has bumps, scratches, stains, wood filler and lots of character. It is a fixer upper, and will require a bit of work. The bellows are new, but do not have any frames and they will need to be attached. The wet plate back is a new Star Camera Company 8x10 back and snap in ground glass. The camera back does not have any means for attaching the wet plate back at the moment, so I will be building part of the rear standard so that the wet plate back and ground glass will snap into place.


To show you the size of this camera, I photographed the Agfa with my 35mm Pentax SPII perched on top of the rear standard:

You can also see the difference in size between my 1/2 plate plate holder and the new 8x10 inch plate holder. It is gonna be pretty cool pouring 8x10 inch tintypes and ambrotypes for sure!

I have two big brassie lenses that I have been wanting to use for a few years. One is a ginormous Darlot projection lens with an 11 inch focal length, and a smaller no name projection lens with a 17 inch focal length. They should work out quite well on the more than ample 9 inch square lens opening on the camera.

So I have a winter project :) That's ok, I am really looking forward to making 8x10 tintypes and ambrotypes. In addition to making frames for the bellows, new lens boards, fix a few pieces on the camera, and rebuild the rear standard... I will also be making two new 8x10 dip tanks for the silver nitrate and fixer solutions. Oh and a tripod. Whew!

When it is done, it is going to be awesome. I can't wait.

485 miles in the van, Manhattan without the hurricane and some chickens

My van packed full of wet plate goodness.

Last weekend I did a marathon photography trip taking the big ole red van on a wet plate adventure!

On Saturday I made the trip up to Manhattan, IL for a their annual Days of Old festival. Ironically I was in Manhattan, IL at the same time Manhattan, NY was getting pummeled by the hurricane. The weather could not have been better in Illinois though, bright sunshine and pleasant temperatures.

This is the second time I have been to this event, and both times have been a blast. I really enjoy talking about the wet plate process, and explaining to the public how photos were made in the 1860's. Getting the camera down, letting the kids look through the ground glass, and talking to adults about the chemistry used and the hardships faced during this time is what "living history" is all about.

 

 

 

My set up at the Manhattan Days of Old festival.

The Krause family of Mantino.

 

 

 

I made a few nice tintypes at Manhattan and met some great people. I have really been embracing making modern work with wet plate, and have enjoyed making images of both living historians as well as modern subjects. There is something special about wet plate, it gets beneath the skin and reveals a depth in a person's character that film or digital photographs can never show.

Both the Krause family from Mantino, and the Kunkel family from Manhattan  held their pose for 6-7 seconds without moving. Getting kids to do this is pretty awesome, I know how hard it is get my kids to sit still! Both families did great sitting in front of the camera :)

 

 

The Kunkel family of Manhattan.

 

I set up next to blacksmith Steven Helis. In the few hours we both demonstrated during the event, I learned a lot about the history of blacksmithing, how metals and their use has evolved over time, and how technology has perfected the craft of blacksmithing over the ages. It was great, because I eat this stuff up. I am always interested in learning about the past in a first hand experience.

Blacksmith Steven Hellis

I wrapped up the day with a two modern portraits. Maria Aust of Joliet walked up to my tent with her boyfriend Clay Manheim. After giving them the nickel tour of the wet plate process, I had Maria sit for a portrait. Her smooth skin and direct eyes really communicate well with the wet plate process, and I enjoyed making a portrait of her.

Maria Aust, 1/2 plate tintype, 10 second exposure.

My final image of the day was of Manhattan Speical Events Coordinator Rachel YellowEyes. Rachel spent most of the afternoon speeding around on her golf cart taking care of event business. It was nice to get her to sit still for a few minutes and have her portrait taken :)

Rachel YellowEyes, 1/2 plate tintype, 8 second exposure. 

I packed up my van and sped west along the construction cone and lane closure road called I-80 to spend the evening with my good friend Anne in Albany, Il. We had a great time catching up, talking with her and her family, and she fed me so well! Thanks Anne for the great pit stop and great times!

Sunday morning I left Albany for Muller's Lane Farm in Rock Falls, IL. Paul and Cyndi Muller run a homestead farm at the tail end of a sub division just south of Rock Falls. Both Paul and Cyndi work hard on the farm all year, taking care of livestock, making homemade jams and preseves, fresh farm eggs, soaps, honey and other crops. Paul is one of those do it yourself kinda guys, and he does some blacksmith work as well. In fact Paul built my head brace that I use in my wet plate work, and the trip to Rock Falls to make some portraits was my payback for his great work.

Curious chickens checking out the darkroom and drinking from the wash water.

I set up under the trees at their home, and made a series of plates for Paul and Cyndi as well as Melissa Tallman and Phillip Brening who were visiting the Muller's that day. My buddies all afternoon were a flock of the most tame and curious chickens I have ever seen :) They kept wanting to drink out of my wash basin, so I had to shoo them away in between plates. It was hilarious!

After a couple of tries, I was able to get a photograph of Paul and his horse, and I made two portraits of the Muller's under their weeping willow tree. The shade was muddled as it was coming through the slender leaves of the willow tree, and made some excellent portraits. I also made pictures of Melissa Tallman and Phillip Brenning. I have known them for some years in the reenacting community, and have watched Phillip grow up over the years. It is amazing how time flies.

Paul Muller and his horse, 1/2 plate tintype four second exposure.

Cyndi Muller and her antique spinning wheel.

Paul and Cyndi Muller under the willow tree.

Phillp Brening, 1/4 plate tintype, 5 second exposure.

Melissa Tallman  and Phillip Brening, 1/2 plate tintype 5 second exposure.

It was an amazing weekend, with 485 miles of driving over two days making pictures outside in beautiful late summer weather!

Three centuries of camera equipment...and a grain elevator

Smack dab in the middle of St. Joseph, Il is a huge concrete grain elevator. It sits along what is left of the railroad right of way (the tracks have been removed).

It is pretty much the focal point of the downtown, and can be seen from blocks away. Ever since moving to this area I've wanted to photograph the grain elevator. Last weekend I had my chance.

I brought along an assortment of camera gear: my wet plate camera, my 1916 Box Brownie and my digital camera. I wanted to see if I could make images with all three camera formats, of the same subject on the same day. Sort of a cross camera challenge.

Cameras are really just a tool, and I don't get too excited about the newest and greatest cameras out there. I mean, I use some pretty old technology and still get results from these older "obsolete" cameras. So it was fun to go from wet plate, to a box camera and finally to a digital camera with the same subject.

So to kick things off here is a wet plate image of the elevator. It took me four tries to get this plate, I was fighting white concrete against a white sky on a day where the sun was popping in and out of the clouds. This moment that I captured was when the sun was blocked by cloud cover. A quick 2 1/2 second exposure, 1/2 plate tintype:

 

Next on the list are a pair of images made with the box brownie. I was shooting Tri-X, so at 400 asa I as getting somewhere in the f11 to 16 range at 60th of a second. Luckily my fancy pants little cardboard camera has three stops to choose from, so I shot most of the elevator at f16. I framed it up in the wee little glass rangefinders and made some exposures:

And finally.... some digital images shot as tiffs in raw format, and converted to black and white. Digital is the easiest of all formats, and you end up taking more pictures than you really need. Luckily a lot of my other gear is slower paced, and it forces me to be a little less frame happy:

All in all it was a fun shoot, and I enjoyed making pictures with different cameras of the same subject. I think I kept things fairly consistent across the board, making the collection of images fairly equal and balanced no matter what camera was used. And I had fun, that is the most important part :)

Madi in wet plate

Last weekend I had the opportunity to work with a great model named Madi. She is nice aspiring model, and we had a fun conversation before setting up to shoot. She wants to be a photographer as well, so that is pretty awesome :) We set up under some nice shade trees in a park close to my house to make some wet plate images.

The weather was great. Sunny, low humidity and warm with a slight breeze. Exposures were all where I wanted them to be, about 7 second exposures with 18-20 second developing times. When I can zero in on this combo, it works the best for me, giving me nice rich black tones while preserving the highlight details.

The wind was a little strong, and Madi (like lots of folks trying to sit still for seven seconds) moved a bit during the exposure. So I pulled out my head brace to help her out.

What is a head brace? A head brace was used by photographers during the wet plate era to help steady the sitter. Sometimes the brace was used on the back of the head, and other supports down the back to keep the sitter from moving during the exposure time. Here is a photo of Madi from the side, showing her with the head brace in place:

The head brace was made for me by Paul Muller of Muller's Lane Farm. I sent him some photographs and links to head braces of the 1860's, and he used his blacksmithing skills to make me a modern version of the head braces used during the era. It is pretty true to form, with all the swings and movements in the right places, and really helps keep the sitter stationary during the exposure.

Another photo of Madi with head brace in place:

You can barely see the head brace peeking out from behind her.

I chose a camera angle that would hide the head brace as much as possible, just like the photographers of the 1860's. 

The reason I was so excited to work with Madi, is because of her fair skin, her freckles and blue eyes. The wet plate process only sees the blue, green and UV spectrum, so anything red or yellow usually comes out darker than normal. I was blown away by the way the wet plate process worked with her skin tones:

1/6 plate tintype, 7 seconds. I love the way you can see her hair blowing in the wind.

1/2 plate tintype, 7 seconds. You can just see the head brace peeking out on the left side.

1/2 plate tintype, 7 second exposure.

A rogue thunderstorm blew in just as we were working, so our portrait session ended when the rain started falling. With all the outdoor events I attend, dealing with a little rain is just part of the job :) It still was fun, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Modeling with wet plate

The wet plate collodion process is such a phenomenal photographic technique. It has filtered down and influenced all of my work, and lately I have begun to use it for modern subjects as well as my reenacting and living history events. In the past, I made a few "modern"  images at reenactments. Finally this year I started pursuing the wet plate process with a focus on modern subjects.

The things that attract me to wet plate work well with both historical and modern subjects. The lens with it's sweet spot in the center of the image. The swirly out of focus areas and the shallow depth of field. The time it takes to set up and make each individual photograph, as opposed to shooting frame after frame on a digital camera. Wet plate taps into my artistic roots, and forces me to work harder on each image.

In mid July I set my camera up at the David Davis Mansion in Bloomington, Illinois for a living history event. Just as the sun was starting to set; Kera, a volunteer at the mansion, walked up in one of her modern print dresses. She looked beautiful in the dress, and I thought that it would make a great photograph in wet plate, so I asked her to pose for me.

The image came out great! Soft evening light, beautiful gray tones and a painterly like out of focus background.

In late July I set up my camera gear at Deming Park in Terre Haute, Indiana. It was a HOT weekend! I've made wet plate images in the field in all sorts of weather, from freezing temps to boiling hot summer days, and everything in between. So the weather wasn't gonna deter me.

The wet plate setup at Deming Park in Terre Haute. Everything you need to make 19th Century images: camera, chemistry, water, plates and darkroom.

Anastasia and Kayla joined me in the park to make some images. They are both models that I contacted through Model Mayhem, a modeling site that brings photographers, models, make up artists etc. together. This was the first time either of them have had their "images struck" with the wet plate process. It was fun to work with them, and let them see the process from start to finish.

We set up in a shady out of the way spot in the park. I absolutely love working in open shade while making pictures. Wet plate is very complimentary under nice even diffused light.

Both Anastasia and Kayla were troopers, with the heat and humidity (and the bugs :) ).  In all we made about ten or so plates over two and a half hours.

Here is the setup for a portrait of Kayla. The camera in position and a reflector used off to the right to bring in just a little bit of fill light back into the subject. As you can see, the tintype is a direct positive, so everything is reversed in the photograph.

The final plate of the day was with Anastasia. We were both pretty hot and tired, and between the two of us we posed this final photograph. Anastasia was going to lay with the camera directly above her.

Here is the setup for Anastasia's photo. I actually moved the camera over and above her head after looking through the ground glass. I was trying to beat the heat, because the plate was already in the plate holder and starting to dry out. I knew I only had a few more minutes before the plate would be dry and no longer sensitive to light. So I moved the camera, refocused and came up with a nice image.

Wet plate is a slow, labor intensive and hands on process. It involves a lot of prep time and patience by both the photographer and the subject.

In the end it produces one of a kind unique photographs that can never be duplicated again.

It is about as far away from modern digital photography as I can get, and I truly enjoy it.