fast forward/look what i made

oh, hello

forgive the delay in updates, posting, etc..

jetlag was replaced with commercial photo jobs and travel to Chicago and Michigan

but i am back..

and i wanted to share with you what i made in yosemite

(i didn't mean to hold out on you)

this is el capitan (this is a tintype)

 

 

this is also el capitan (this is a tintype)

this is cathedral rock and spires (this is a glass plate)

this is a glass plate view of yosemite falls from glacier point

this is my sallie mann plate of yosemite falls

this is my very first plate (notice the chemical burn)

it was very important to will, my dear instructor, that we learned to make both ambrotypes (glass plates) and tintypes. i am now empowered to do both.. and i can't wait to make more.

i am day dreaming about silver nitrate on my fingers and hands. my first camera has been outfitted. i am commissioning my dark room and chemicals have been ordered. i plan to be making wet plates by the end of the month. it may not come soon enough. while my journey to yosemite and initial introduction to wet plate may be over, my love affair with collodion is long from drawing to a close.

xo

a collodion dark room

i am sure you can picture in your mind the camera.

a nineteenth century view camera.

(it is shaped kinda like this)

but what were we working out of?

 on this trip we had the luxury of working out of two dark room spaces. 

one was a trailer that had been outfitted as a proper 21st century darkroom. spacious, kinda. definantly a luxury in the field.

and then our second darkroom was a beautiful, period accurate, field dark box.

and it looks like this:

this is the inside:

very simple really.
just collodion, wet plate holder, silver bath, developer and water baths needed.
(fixer is kept on the outside)
i am already sketching designs for a box of my own

Collodion Camp Day 1: operation brain melt

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.

.

not over, just begining..

ok. i owe you a catch up.. it's been four days.

i know i know, what happened? how was it? you are thinking. "tell me everything"

as i am writing this post, i am flying somewhere over Colorado. and i am decompressing and sorting through the last eight days of my life.. i might have to take a minute.

i don't even know where to begin.

it was amazing.

incredible.

it was one of the hardest things i have ever done. 

i spent four days in one of the most beautiful and dramatic landscapes on earth. there is no place like yosemite. it is breathtaking. i had 4 long days in extreme collodion photo camp. coyotes and deer and bears. i tried my hand (and succeeded) at a new craft and medium of photography. my hands are stained with silver nitrate. i almost ran out of gas. i made new friends and worked alongside some brilliant photographers. (i think i am in love with bob szabo) i self navigated and traversed across a giant state in a ford focus. 

i feel pretty great. i feel like i accomplished something here.

it has been a hell of ride, in the best of every way.

i have never been so challenged: physically, emotionally, creatively.. in such a short time.

this has been a working adventure. and i couldn't have done it alone.

i am so grateful and indebted to every single person who financially and emotionally supported this journey.  i could not have done it without all of you.
(i sent you all postcards)

this past week has been a rare opportunity in life for self and creative discovery. i am blessed.

i thank you..

i am walking away with an experience of a lifetime and a new craft.

and my journey in collodion photography has only just begun..

and look what i made

 

el capitan, my very first tin type

xoxox

yosemite sam

i cannot tell you how many times i said out loud to myself, today and yesterday

"holy shit, what is this place?"

 to catch you up..

i left san francisco tuesday early afternoon for a quick and brief layover at scribe winery in sonoma, ca

 http://scribewinery.com/

(check it out and buy their wines)

i got a glorious private tour and free reign of the premises to photo explore

i spent my morning trampling through a vineyard and searching for the apiary and stopping to smell the peonies

i relunctantly left and begin a 5 hour drive towards my final destination, yosemite

but not before having a divine lunch on the side of the road in napa

5 hours on California route 99 and 41

i stumbled into the sierra foothills

and the mouth of south yosemite

i drove into wawona to the historic wawona hotel

where i sat on the porched and sipped a california white wine cocktail

and dreamed big day dreams of the valley and el captain and half dome

and my following days of adventure

i spent the night at a very comfortable and quaint b n b called the hounds tooth inn in oakhurst

and woke up this morning around 7 am to trek into the park

i made it all the way to glacier point

for a short hike and photo opportunity

can you believe that they used to let you walk out into the edge of this cliff?

let the wet plate process begin..

I made it!

and so it begins

well hello, california. 

it is so good to see you again.

thank you for having me.

it has been quite a long day. so long of a day that it feels like it has been two days.

(it probably doesn't help that i can't stop listening to M83)

i woke up this morning at 5:45am to catch an 8:15am flight out of atlanta

and five hours later, it was 10:15am again

today was my day to get acclimated to rental cars and california road signs and to try my hand at solo map reading and navigating and to eat delicious food and to probably find the only bar in the mission district of san francisco that was playing bluegrass music on a monday night..

it has been a good day

a very good day

take a look for yourself 

you can't tell, but i am hanging off a cable car on the other side of this photo.

shameless self portrait and the golden gate. happy 75th birthday golden gate bridge.

mission chinese food. so good. get the sizzling lamb and the salt cod fried rice. and the tiger rolls.

its worth the wait. and the communal tables.

on the plane today, somewhere in between 20,000 feet over birmingham and death valley, i spent most of my time reading a book my mom gave me from her time in yosemite.. and i must confess, that while i've had this book since the first mention/conception of a pilgrimage yosemite photography trip out west, today was the first day i really really read anything other than the pictures.. and it struck a cord.

and i wanted to share it with you.. 

 (i also would like to say that i have the raddest mom in the whole world who i love love love)

carl watkins.
i like carl e watkins. for lots of reasons. on a surface level, i respect him. between 1858 and 1891, the work of watkins' constitutes one of the longest and most productive careers in nineteenth-century american photography. he was a pioneer. in the tradional sense of living out west in new cities and settlements but then also of both the medium of collodion tin type photography and then within the realm of artist/environmental activism. we have watkins to thank for protecting/creating yosemite. his early landscapes of mariposa grove and what was then a very large territory of virgin, unfelled forest of sequoias and redwoods, that we now know as yosemite national park, gave cause and desire to preserve and protect. his images of big trees and waterfalls rallied if not a nation, perhaps a large sector within it. if president lincoln had had a phone in 1861, watkins would have been on his EPA speedial. if it wasn't for watkins.. who knows what could have happend.

and then i also love his images.

 

and on a deeper level, i feel like i can relate.
carl emmons watkins came to california from oneona, new york in 1849 to work as a clerk in a buddy's hardware store in sacramento. after a series of floods and fires in the hardware store ended his career in the hammer and nails business, watkins found himself working in a daguerreotype photographic studio in san francisco, as an assistance to robert vance. with no prior training or inclination, watkins found himself a purpose and a passion. he cut his teeth on architectuals and city landscapes. and on a chance visit to mariposa grove, just outside of yosemite valley, he found his niche. true environmental portraits. landscapes. very big landscapes.
watkins spent thirty years capturing this magical place and working towards something that was bigger than himself.
he, like me, started out in a career doing something else other than photography. and when that something else didn't pan out he turned to or found purpose with a camera. (like myself). i left my day job to pursue this.. i have spent the last four years of my life chasing the images that live in my mind and trying to figure out how to manipulate a camera to properly capture them.
 i, like watkins, am a self taught man (well, woman really). i am not a traditional student.. i went to school, but not for this. some classes and a handful of mentors.. i took my own long way around.
i'll skip over the part about watkins going blind and crazy and dying in a mental instuition, oh man.. i hope that's one thing we won't share..
 i'll just leave you with the part of carl watkins that leaves me encouraged and inspired and hopeful that this visual passion that is photography can be rooted in something that is more purposeful than just aesthetics or storytelling.. i hope that there is something to be found in my work that is preservation or perserving a moment or idea or an attempt of capturing something that is bigger than myself.
the goal should always be bigger than ourselves.
i am still figuring all of that part out, but it seems like a worthy goal..
i like you carl e watkins.
and i hope you do too.
good night california.
see you tomorrow
xoxoxo

(m83, bulit to spill, sly and family stone, fleet foxes, and a fleetwood mac kinda day)