Whole Plate Collodion Negatives

Whole Plate Wet Collodion Negative - August 2009, Viernheim, Germany
Whole Plate Wet Collodion Negative - August 2009, Viernheim, Germany - (the streak is from "lens flare")
Wet Collodion Negatives are intense and a lot of fun. They take some pratice and there's no "high-wow" factor for the public, but they are really special for personal work and for POP (Albumen prints/Salt prints) prints.

Making Albumen Prints from Wet Collodion Negatives

Albumen printing is tricky, but pays off once you get it down.

Today, I was having issues with sensitizing the Albumen paper. I wanted to check the difference between the single coated and double coated paper that I made a coupe of weeks ago. I'm going to be floating a bunch this weekend and wanted to make sure that the double coated paper was worth the effort (it is!).

I used a Hake brush to sensitize (brushed the silver nitrate on the Albumen paper) and got some "measles" on one of the prints and "weakness" in areas of the other print. Tomorrow, I'm going to use the 3 minute float on the AGNO3 - it's much better.

So far, my German Albumen paper is "da bomb"! The final images on Albumen paper will be much better than these, but I wanted to show you the process - as you can see, it's not for pussies.

 

Checking the print in the contact frame. You can see I have some "brush strokes" there - weak silver from a previous batch in the brush - and my technique wasn't perfect either. Just some quick prints for testing.
Here, you can see those "measles" - other than that, it's okay. Keep in mind, these are "in camera" negatives, or foundation negatives, they have not been intensified or re-developed (yet). That's my next step - I'll compare Albumen prints - before and after.

 
This negative was a bit more dense (maybe 1.75) You can see the "silver issue" in the bottom right. Both of these images are gold toned.

Collodion Negatives & Waxed Albumen Prints

I’ve been working through making Albumen, Albumen paper, and started making negatives today. I really enjoy making work in my studio -  in my space. I feel completely in control and can get on the plate what’s in my mind more efficiently (lazy and scared, huh?).

Today, I was fortunate to have some very interesting sitters that were very cooperative. I only made four negatives, but I’m very pleased. I wanted to share one of those with you. I’ve been after these kinds of images in the negative form for a long time. The problem with making them, is keeping the sitters interested. I usually get them fired up after the first (positive) image. With negatives, however, there’s no “high wow” factor. It’s difficult, and it’s kept me from making this happen. No more, this is what I’m going to concentrate on for the foreseeable future (negatives and Albumen prints).

There a lot of things I like about this image; texture, light, expression, but most of all, I like what the image implies. It’s disturbing, or disorienting, and interesting to me.

4"x5" Wet Collodion Negative - Waxed Albumen Print

Shifting Priorities & Making Albumen

I've made a commitment to myself that I will spend more time making my personal work (completing my project here in Europe), and exhibiting/publishing my work. And I will spend less time teaching, answering email, and spending numerous hours on the public forum board.

Don't misunderstand me, I've enjoyed doing all of those things, but my priorities are going to shift to more personal goals - it's time to focus (pun intended)! My time will be spent making my personal work, following up on my commitments to the new book, DVD and web site and sharing some of my work and experiments with close friends. I'll still blog and I'll still post work occasionally, but I'm going to put more time toward my personal work - period. I'm an artist, and I want my life to reflect that.

I have a few workshops left this year and one scheduled for March of 2010. Other than those, and maybe one in Paris with a show, I probably won't do anymore workshops. I really enjoying teaching, but I need the time I have left here in Europe to complete what I came here to do.

It feels like a good time to do this, too. I think it was the completion the new book/DVD that allowed me to make this commitment to myself. It's like I can really focus now on making photographs. It's not that I want to close my site down, and become a recluse, I'm just seeking more balance. It seems that I'm always teaching or doing something instructional for other people. I've actually had a couple of people email me and tell me that they had no idea I made art. Those are not good emails! I know artists that don't even have a web site, don't answer email and are very successful making and showing work - doing their thing - no distractions. I'm envious of them and I need to follow their lead. It's true what people say, "You become what you do," and I've become a teacher when I want to be an artist (nothing wrong with being a teacher, but you know what I'm saying in this context).

Making Albumen

Friday, I stopped at a roadside Bauernmarkt where I get fruit and vegetables a couple of times a week. It's wonderful food. On Friday, I picked up 40 large eggs, too. They are big, fresh free-range chicken eggs. Dresden, Germany is a few hours north of us. It was the epicenter for Albumen paper in the 1860s - 1880s. They used 6 million eggs a year there! I'm hoping the genes of some of those chickens are in these!


Albumen Prints: The albumen found in egg whites are used to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper and became the dominant form of photographic positives from 1855 to the turn of the century, with a peak in the 1860-90 period.


There are very few people in the world today making Albumen prints with Collodion negatives.


It was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative.


The albumen print, also called albumen silver print, was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard.


Summer's going to be making a lot of custard!


2 Liters of Albumen!

Thanks to Summer and Jeanne for shooting photographs of me making Albumen today. images!

World Wet Plate Day Book 2009

I'm most happy doing meaningful work. It's satisfying and rewarding for me. I've never understood how people can go to jobs they hate everyday. I know that a lot of people do that. It's both sad and wrong.

If there's anything I know, it's that I know we should do what are heart tells us to do. We should follow our passion. And we should pursue happiness and find fulfillment in our lives. Contrary to popular belief, those things have little or nothing to do with money and fame. We shouldn't settle for mediocrity or fall victim to fear or the illusion of job security.

I've been multi-tasking for the last couple of months, maybe longer. I've been living and breathing my DVD for a couple of years, but I've also been weaving other, smaller projects into my schedule. One of them is the World Wet Plate Day book.

I've had the pleasure (and I say that with sincerity and honesty) to edit and prep almost 80 Collodion images shot on May 2, 2009 from all over the world. It's very exciting! It's going to be a wonderful publication for several reasons. First, all of the proceeds are going for a great cause and it's the very first one of it's kind (every year we'll publish one). It should be ready in a couple of weeks! Please consider buying a copy.

This is a mockup of the cover (all of the way open - nothing on the spine) - it's an 8.5" x 8.5" full color, perfect bound book - almost 100 pages.

The World Wet Plate Collodion Day Book 2009

Höchst, Deutschland: Portraits On The River

We loaded up and headed up to (north of us) Frankfurt yesterday (Sunday). It was cool and a rained a little bit. The rain has never stopped me from making photographs in the past so I set up and enjoyed the day.

It was the start of the Höchster Schloßfest in Höchst (suburb of Frankfurt). Every two weeks, during the summer, I try to meet with a small group artists (mostly painters) on the big river for Montmartre am Main. It's a beautiful area and there are usually a lot of people interested in what we're doing.

I think I know what I love most about doing this now - it's the "performance" and sharing. While the images are beautiful and I would never minimize that, the thing that I get the most joy from is the excitement and interest of the community. It's beautiful to watch people become totally engaged in my world, with no distractions and nothing pre-occupying them. They're removed from the stress of the world and completely absorbed in the art and performance of photography. That is incredibly satisfying to me. It's like giving a gift and experiencing the happiness, excitement and joy that the receiver pushes back over to you. Anyway, I'm waxing Collodion now.. here are the portraits:


Klaus - 4x5 Alumitype - June 21, 2009


Mirjam - 4x5 Alumitype June 21, 2009


Christian - Whole Plate Alumitype June 21, 2009


Team Q! Rockin' Frankfurt on the river!

Preserving The Chemical Photography Era: The Getty

I was pleasantly surprised today when I picked up our mail. The Getty Conservation Institute gave me a nice certificate and letter for my contributions to the project, "Preserving the Chemical Photography Era."The Getty Cert and Thank You

I was happy to participate. I'm going to try to submit some more photographs over the next few months; the Collodion Negative, Albumen print, Salt print, and Ferrotype. I can geek out a little bit doing this stuff and make some nice images for the Getty to keep forever.

Nitrocellulose & The Dumbest Generation

I'm half artist and half geek. I’m interested in how things work. I seem to live in the "geek world" when I'm gearing up to write, teach or do some kind of experiment with Collodion, or Collodion related things.

Having a certain amount of knowledge about a topic or an area of interest helps you to achieve your goals and gives you more opportunity for growth. I don’t believe that every artist needs to understand their materials like a research scientist, but I wouldn’t discourage if they were so inclined.

Wet Plate Collodion photography opens the "geek door" wide open for me. Most people working in photography today don’t even understand the basics of how a photograph is made (I’m not talking pixelography here, I’m talking about light energy and silver). Again, I’m not saying that you need to understand how electricity works to turn on a light, but you would have a greater appreciation for it if you did. This applies to photography as well. Knowledge and connections – those are important to me. If you look at the history of photography, or the history of art for that matter, you’ll find that both artistic movements and technical advances were made because of profound understanding (knowledge) and connections.

So yes, I’ve been "geeking out". This is how nitrocellulose is made (Collodion).

 

I was listening to an interview with Mark Bauerlein this morning on the radio. He wrote, "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)". If the statistics he used are true, we (people in our 40s) have a lot to be worried about when we get old.

It’s an irony so commonplace it's become almost trite: despite the information superhighway, despite a world of knowledge at their fingertips, the younger generation today is less informed, less literate, and more self-absorbed than any that has preceded it. But why? According to the author, an English professor at Emory University, there are plenty of reasons. The immediacy and intimacy of social-networking sites have focused young people’s Internet use on themselves and their friends. The material they’re studying in school (such as the Civil War or The Great Gatsby) seems boring because it isn’t happening right this second and isn’t about them. They’re using the Internet not as a learning tool but as a communications tool: instant messaging, e-mail, chat, blogs. And the language of Internet communication, with its peculiar spelling, grammar, and punctuation, actually encourages illiteracy by making it socially acceptable. It wouldn’t be going too far to call this book the Why Johnny Can’t Read for the digital age. Some will disagree vehemently; others will nod sagely, muttering that they knew it all along. From David Pitt (Booklist).

Part of the conversation this morning was about this generation (12-25 year-olds) reading and writing more than any other generation. However, only 23% of high school graduates are proficient readers! They also talked about communication. This generation communicates more than any other, too. Emails, Tweets, Texts, Facebook, My Space, etc. etc. However, they communicate about NOTHING! They drone on about what they had for breakfast and what when they went to bed, etc. meaningless to everyone except them. The explanation he had for this was very interesting and explained a lot about the “social network movement” and our mental health. And before you email me about my Facebook or Twitter account, I want to say that I’m making a concerted effort to stay away from them as much as possible. Eventually, I would like to delete my accounts – however, it’s a process, not an event.

Bauerlein mentioned two movies, too; Flunked and Idiocracy.

One more note; I had an interview Friday night (via phone) with an organization in NYC that operates private schools for underserved communities. They’re opening a high school in Harlem next year and may be looking for a fulltime art teacher – photography, digital media, video, etc. So maybe when I return to America, (sometime next year or the first of 2011) I’ll pursue something that will allow me to do my part in helping this generation live up to their potential.