Historic Photo Demo in the Windy City!

Photo Courtesy of The Clarke House Museum.

  
On Saturday March 23rd I had a great time at the Glessner House Museum coach house in Chicago. I spent a few hours that afternoon talking about historical photographic processes and the correct way to store and preserve antique photographs. This was part of the Winter Workshop Series held by the Clarke House Museum.

Gallery of images from the event

After a talk about wet plate collodion, I did a live cyanotype demo with an ambrotype I created with my wet plate camera.

It was fun, and I enjoyed all the questions and comments I received from the folks that came to the event.

Luckily I beat the bad weather out of town, it snowed like the dickens on Sunday. We had about 14 inches of snow fall Sunday afternoon into Monday morning. Today it is 60 degrees, and the spring flowers are coming up. So goes springtime in Illinois!!

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.

149th anniversary of Missionary Ridge

Battle of Mission [i.e., Missionary] Ridge, Nov. 25th, 1863 - presented with the compliments of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company / Cosack & Co. lith., Buffalo & Chicago. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

 
Today marks the 149th anniversary of the Battle of Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga Tennessee. On this day one solder among thousands was mortally wounded during the battle:

 "Among all the noble spirits that that day struggles so grandly for their country's flag, there was none more heroic than Walter V. Reeder, Company C of the 36th, who, having received the wound in the thigh, of which he died in about two weeks, lay bleeding on the hill-side, and taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, waved it towards the top of the ridge, silently inspiring his comrades to complete what he had so gallantly helped to commence." (History of the Thirty-Six Regiment Illinois Volunteers, during the War of the Rebellion" L.G. Bennett and WM. M. Haigh, 1876)

I know about Walter and his brother Carvosso because of an almost forgotten tombstone near Somonauk, Il. In the summer of 1997 I was a photojournalist working for the The Daily Times (now The Times) in Ottawa, Il. Workers with the La Salle County Genealogy Guild were clearing and documenting stones in Bernard Cemetery. Among the stones was that of Carvosso and Walter Reeder. It read:

"CARVOSSO, died Mar. 4 1868 aged 26 yrs. 4 days. WALTER, fatally wounded at Mission Ridge Nov. 25, 1863 and died at Chattanooga, Tenn. Dec. 13, 1863 aged 20 yrs, 8 mos. 11 ds. Both were with the 36th Ill. Vol. Infantry."

In 1997, I only knew the first names of the two soldiers and the unit they were fighting with. Over the course of a year of research I was able to obtain their medical and pension records, as well as state mustering records.



More importantly, there were two repositories of letters preserved from Walter when he sent them back to his family. I have copies of these letters, and they describe everything from camp life to his beliefs on slavery, battle accounts and how much he missed his family at home.

Although both boys have their name on this headstone, Walter lies in a marked grave at the National Cemetery in Chattanooga. Carvasso is buried in Somonauk.

 

If it wasn't for the interest in these two soldiers, and the research I did 15 years ago, I would not be making wet plate photos today.

My wet plate gallery opening at the Alley Gallery in Danville will also coincide with the 149th day of the Battle of Missionary Ridge. Amazing.

Thank you Walter and Carvosso. Thank you for giving me a window to the past, enlightening me on the ways of a soldier during the Civil War. Thank you for almost 10 years of wet plate photography and thank you for your service to our country.

I thought I would end this blog with a few words from Walter, written in August of 1863. Three short months before a musket ball tore though his thigh, lodged in his spine, and took his life a few weeks after the battle of Missionary Ridge.

Benton Barracks, St. Louis
Saturday Aug. 1st '63

"The tide of time still rolls onward, and now, I find myself to be a Soldier of almost two (2) years standing, and in taking a hasty thought back over the past, I can scarcely think where the time has gone. But then to think of the hardships we have endured, the marches we have made, and enter into all this minutiae it looks like a long long time.
      I trust that I am truly thankful that my life is still spared, though I have passed through many dangers, both seen and unseen, and my comrades have fallen on my right hand and on my left. Why my poor soul has been spared I cannot say, but I hope, to some good purpose, I trust that I may be kept from harm and return to my Home not soon to be returned again by war.
     I think some times of my comrades, who started with me in a Soldiers life, with prospects for life as good or better than mine. But they now sleep in the soil of the sunny south, and they will rest until the morning of the Resurrection when they will rise to judgment. Some of our Boys Sleep at Rolla Mo, Some at Springfield Mo. Some in Arkansas. Some in Mississippi, Some slumber in Kentucky others lie in far off Tennessee. It is a sad thought to think of this so many laying down their lives, in its morning when life seems to them to wear new attractions, and when hope pictured out a happy future to step off the stage of being.
     It seems hard to die in the spring time of life. When there seems to be so much to live for, but how much harder it is to die far from Home, among comparative strangers. No Mothers or Sisters soft hand to perform those offices, that no one can do well as they. No Fathers kind solicitude for their affection, and to comfort as far as maybe the last hours of their suffers. This seems quite hard but all this do the Soldiers. Committed to maintain our Governments. To give to the American people a land of Freedom. Where they may have civil and Religious liberty. This is what our Soldiers die for, and Should not the nation mourn their fate?"

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.