ok. the jet lag is receeding.. i am settling back into my athen's routine.
the california excitement and physical and emotional stimulation are passing.
i am ready to fill you in.
maybe i will try to go in chronological order. or not.
Yosemite is a beautiful and powerful place. So much has happened here.. The trees that grow in Mariposa Grove are older than the pyramids in Egypt. The say a glacier carved the granite domes and mountains and created the valley floor 10,000 years ago. People have come and gone.. Natives, pioneers, presidents and tourists. The one thing they all had in common, I am sure, was the sense of something incredible..
John Muir said that Yosemite is "a revelation in landscape that enriches one's life forever.." I wouldn't mind saying the same thing about my time in Yosemite studying the collodion processes.
Day 1 of Will Dunniway's Wet Plate Workshop, or what I will lovingly refer to as photo camp, started early.. I drove into the park
from the south entrance of Oakhurst around 7 am . I wanted to watch the
sun come up over the big trees. I took a drive listening to fleet foxes
and their perfectly appropriate mountain music,windows down and fresh
air a plenty.. then a hike to Glacier Point. Here, 4,892 feet above the valley floor and directly across fro Half Dome, is one of the best view points in the park of the High Sierra.
(good morning Half Dome)
After hanging out on the edge of the earth.. I drove back into Wawona to have lunch and meet up with my camp mates. If you ever have had the pleasure of a church ski retreat weekend, then use that memory to relate to my four days at photo camp. 16 people in one ranger lodge. Two bathrooms. Spaghetti dinners. Long days with caravan travel through winding mountain passes. We were quite the crew. 8 students in all.. 4 with some experience, 4 with only dark room processing. Most were retired from something or another. My friend and camp BFF Christine was a self proclaimed dilettante house wife here to recreate Carl E Watkin's views of the valley and the domes..
(hi! bff Christine)
Danielle was a graphic designer from San Francisco. I was lucky to have some ladies to spend my days and nights with. And all together, a motley crue, sure, but we were all there with a common goal, to learn to make beautiful wet plates.
Day 1 of PHOTO CAMP was an exercise in optimum brain melting. There was a lot
to be covered in our workshop. The history of this particular photo process, the chemistry, the actual printing process, the supplies, the how-to in a modern day world..
A full semester crash course just to cover the basics because time was precious.. we only had four days. So Thursday was the basics. A semester worth of basics in six hours..
I can give you a short overview if you want.
Wet plate photography is attributed to Fredrick Scott Archer, an English sculptor and painter. He was the first to experiment with collodion with the hope to produce a photographic negative on plate glass.
What is collodion ,you ask? Collodion is a thick/syrupy liquid like substance that is made up of nitrated cotton, ether and grain alcohol. It was used in the 19th century as a liquid bandage by surgeons. But in 1851 Archer used collodion to adhere bromides and iodides (salts, really) to glass plates. His idea was simple: when iodized collodion comes in contact with silver nitrate, it creates a light sensitive film or matter. Once the plate became sensitized or was soaked in a silver bath, it would then be loaded into a camera for proper exposure. (as fast as possible before the collodion and silver mixture could dry) Using an acidic solution of iron sulfates and potassium cyanide (!!!!!) the plates would be rinsed and fixed, preserving an exposed image. Glass plates allowed photographers to create multiple images or provide an almost instant collodion positive such as an ambrotype or ferrotype. Tintypes were the worlds first instant form of photography.
(And I got to make a few.)
Wet plate photography starts by taking a pre-measured and cut piece of tin or glass and pouring the collodion mixture of dried cotton, ether, grain alcohol, and a scattering of bromides and iodides. With collodion, you are not only mixing chemicals that will become your film grain, you are also pouring your film grain. Which for novices and beginners, this is the hardest part.
This is how you pour a plate:
(And this my dear teacher Mr Dunniway)
{he makes it look way too easy}
But before you can pour your plate.. you have to clean your plate.
(and not the fun way, i.e. like, eating)
This is my camp friend Danielle cleaning her plate.
So, day 1.. there was a lot to cover.
And we dived straight in.
We even figured out a way to fellowship and and nerd out and get to know each other. One of the most valuable aspects of this trip was having access to fifteen other brains who were trying to solve the same collodion problem.
And on, our second day, which was our first day in the field, we (I) needed all the help we (I) could get.
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