Wet Plate in December!

On December 5th, Amanda Baker stopped by for a wet plate demo. Amanda is the Programs and Events Coordinator for 40 North/88 West - Champaign County Arts Council. She is filming different artists for a video to be shown at the annual Gala fundraiser on February 9th.

I usually make my tintypes outside, so I set up my portable darkbox, equipment and chemistry and made a few wet plate tintypes. It was a bit cold, but bright and sunny. I kept the chemistry in the house until the last minute so that it would be warm enough to make some plates.

Wet plate darkroom (left) and a table full of wet plate stuff.

The inside of my small portable dark box.

I chose the white mulberry tree in my back yard as a "subject" as Amanda took video of me pouring and shooting a few plates. After an overexposed plate of six seconds, I was able to shoot a nice tintype of the tree at a quick two second exposure. It is interesting to compare modern digital snapshots to wet plate photos. Here are photos from my camera phone (top) and with the wet plate camera (below):

We had just enough time for one more photo, so I had Amanda pose for a wet plate portrait. 

The plate ended up a bit underexposed. I tried to make up the difference with a little over development, but could not get the shadows to come in. Not bad for a sunny day in December. Yes December!

Here are the three plates resting in on the drying rack outside. Not bad for 45 minutes of shooting.