Hand-titing ambrotypes

So yesterday I spent the whole doing some ambrotypes at my friend's lab for an exhibithion that's about to come to celebrate the 2015 wet plate day, which will happen in May.

I wanted to do some tests hand-tinting ambrotypes, I've seen many examples that were made at the time and as well some contemporary artists and I thought they're stunning. I know ambrotypes and ferrotypes looks fantatisc already just by themselves but I wanted to try anyway. As seen on Mark Osterman video, I added some dry pastels powder with pencils just before the varnish stage, got rid of the excess with the air blower and varnished. 

This is the result!

My very first Wet Plate Collodion Photographs

A very especial post for me as I had been meaning to try this for a few years... this is my first experience with wet collodion photograph!

After spending a wonderful weekend in Scotland learning this technique with Carl Radford it's needless to say how much I enjoyed the whole experience!

Learning this process it's almost like a survival guide to me... with prices of film increasing significantly,  the chances  that one day film will not exist or will be really hard to get are becoming higher and higher so I like the idea of producing my very own light sensitive emulsion from scratch.

Frederick Scott Archer was the inventor of the wet collodion photograph process which was introduced in 1850. Archer died on May 1st 1857 without even having his invention patented, he was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

My desire for experimenting with this process started exactly two years ago, on May the 1st 2010 in the same  Kensal Green Cemetery in London where Archer it's been buried. I was fortunate to attend an event in the honour of Frederick Archer where Carl, Quinn and a group of wet plate collodion enthusiasts around the world decided to give him the deserved recognition for his invention. On that day during a ceremony a headstone in his honour was unveiled and a tribute was deservedly paid, there were also exhibitions and collodion demonstrations.