Red Dust On My Tintypes
Let's face it, staying at home brings attention to what projects you can accomplish with the time you are giving or even start that search for your dream camera. Which is exactly what I did. I have a previous blog post to 2014 when I went out to the Salton Sea with a couple of other photographers and for the first time saw a banquet camera. Specifically an 8x20 Deardorff. Seeing what such a wide format can capture enchanted me and has been in my brain up until this very day.
Ever since then, I had been saving my money and scouring eBay and online auctions until one showed up, and in that time I learned more about how rare of a size that is, and for a camera to show up in useable condition was even rarer. Thankfully I was alerted to Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers having a big auction of wooden cameras and lenses and was luckily enough to have won a bid for this beautiful Gundlach Korona 7x17"
Make it stand out
In another post, I can go through the process of building a darkroom and tanks for this size format.
This means there is only one thing left to tell, and it's the first social distance/ road trip using this camera.
Destenation: Sedona, AZ
Leading up to this trip I started to search hashtags on Instagram of Sedona and the different locations to try and go and shoot and came across this image by Cameron Zucker, a local photographer to Flagstaff. He and I got to talking about large format photography and where to go in Sedona to do Wet Plate. We ended up making an arrangement for him to take my father and me off-roading to Chicken Point Overlook and meet in person (with masks).
Working with 7x17 has been a whole new learning process for me and it makes me excited to work with it more in the future. Even pouring the collodion and handling the plate I had to come up with different strategies to make sure the plate doesn't bend too much for the weight of either water or chemistry being poured onto it. Here are some snapshots from some of the first days of shooting.
The pressure of having only 7 days to tackle all the beauty that Sedona had to offer, was great. I wanted the sun to be up for longer and my energy levels to stay high. Out of the 16 plates (yikes, that's a lot of silver...) only a small handful came out to the quality that I'm proud of. Up until this, I had been daydreaming that I was going to crush everything on the first try.
NOPE.
Temperature and weather had different plans for me. Turns out that running from the camera to the darkroom in 80-degree weather can cause dry out and an equal opportunity for dust to get somewhere in your plate holder/tanks/water. At the end of the day, I had to try and reason with myself that even if I didn't get one good tintype that day, it's still something that helps me progress further to getting it right. I need to take in account of weather next time and even think about carrying ether to pour into my collodion to replenish what dissolved out when pouring a plate.
Here below is a small gallery of the tintypes I feel most proud of.
I would like to draw attention to these last two tintypes below this text. These were taken at Chicken Point Overlook, where Cameron graciously took us in his off roading truck. We arrived there a little after 4pm and the sun was setting so we knew we had to work very fast. After setting up the darkroom in his trunk I rushed and took a shot looking over the landscape and it turned out to be the best one I would take out of 3 plates. The next one I wanted the same landscape, but with Cameron off in the distance. I have learned since meeting him that he is quite the adventurer and photographer and I felt like this would have captured him well.
I poured the plate, sensitized in the silver and walked to the camera and loaded the plate holder. During my 1 minute and 30 second exposure, a line of at least 10 Jeep cars (with all of their lights on, I might add) drove right through my image. The last one in the conga line even bothered to stop and ask if they were in the way...
The plate with Cameron in it didn't work out. So the next best thing I could do was scan both images into my computer, photoshop Cameron out of the bad image and digitally put him in the one plate that did work out and have an image of what I was trying to capture.
My final thoughts is that I very much plan to return to Sedona for a redemption trip. I'm not going to let the wind, dirt and hot temperatures scare me away.
No words can describe the devastation of what 2020 has brought on the world, the pandemic of COVID-19, and the civil unrest of Black/Indigenous Lives Matter, and the millions of lives lost to both events speak for themselves. With this being said, I wish to not draw attention to struggles I have faced during this time by the use of my blog. But instead, encourage you to read testimonies of those who have been out every day marching peacefully and protesting and doing the work.
Here is a great resource naming victim funds, bail funds, and community organizations that you can donate too.
I cant wait for the day to come where I can work with groups of people again and share the wet plate collodion process as I once did before.