Ghostly photos for Halloween

I took these photographs a while ago and discarded them. Found them recently and realised I quite like them. They represent my memories of Zuzana's early childhood. 

Happy Halloween :)

Close To Closure

Close to Closure is an ongoing group exhibition, in Dublin, where I'm presenting a series of wet plate portraits I took recently. The exhibition brings together eight photographers (myself, Rebecca McGetrick, Artur Sikora, Sharon Murphy, Jeanette Lowe, Calin Ploscar, Fiona O’Donnell and Hugh McCabe) from different backgrounds and nationalities who first came together in NCAD in 2009. 

Close to Closure is our first time exhibiting together and it is a of part of Irish photography festival -PhotoIreland 2012. We had a vibrant and nice opening on last Wednesday night with artist Sean Hillen launching the exhibition. Below is an example of some of the nine portraits I'm showing, but there is much more intersting projects on the walls, so if you are around please drop in. Tomorrow is the last day! 

Location : Backloft Gallery, Augustine Street, Dublin 8.

Adam

Sarah

Lucy

and the instalation itself, on the wall:

Sunday afternoon..

..with lovely people.

Lucie

David

Jane

Salt print.

It is not too far from albumen to salt printing (albumen is essencially a salted paper print, using albumen as binder). It is actually much easier to prepare salt solution then the eggs' whites albumen, and it's less smelly!

Same fixer and silver sensitizing solution, as for albumen, can be used - at least that's what I did.

Just mixed water, salt and gelatine (- most popular receipt, details below).

The main issue stays the proper negative. This time I've used an old, one of my first collodion portraits, accidentally overexposed - waiting  for printing test until now :)

..a lot to learn on this processes, it's just a record of the first tests..

30 min exposure, halogen lamp 400W, 4x5 WPC negative, water colour paper

Receipts:

5 grams Sodium Chloride

0.5 grams Gelatine
250 ml Distilled Water

Mix gelatine with one fourth of the water and let it bloom a bit. Heat the rest of the water and dissolve Sodium Chloride (Sea Salt) in it. Then mix the two together. Cover the paper with salt solution and leave to dry.

Sensitize with - I've used 15% silver nitrate solution in distilled water, that I've prepared for albumen first. (different sollution can be used, most typical - 12%, but 15% should result in increased contrast). Leave to dry.

Expose. Wash in water. Fix (again - same as for albumen) :

75 grams Sodium Thiosulphate anhydrous

(as I had only ST Peptahydrate I've multiplied the required amount by 1.56 =117g)

500 mL Distilled Water

1g sodium carbonate (washing soda, which you can buy or you can 'do' (like in my case) by heating baking soda) (some receipts do not include it)

Wash well - ca 30 min.

Little improvements..

...4x5 and 5x7 inserts to 8x10 holder :

what means I don't have to carry 2 cameras for different formats, anymore, I have a new format ('in between' size), and I can use my 300 mm Industar lens with 5x7 or 4x5  - should be nice for portraits or just for change.

Simple thing, but not that easy to do, due to little thickness of these elements.

I did them from balsa wood first, but it soaks up chemicals so badly that collodion stick to it (and the frame rather wouldn't survive long).

Finally my skilful friend Pawel, a carpenter, managed to put them together for me. I think I'll  ask him for 8x8' square and 4x10' panoramic formats as well :) 

5x7 tested on Lubor,

as you can see the enthusiasm of my model was growing with each photograph (hard life of photographer's partners:)

 Lubor & Rysiek 5x7, clear glass ambro

Lubor 2, 5x7

Lubor 3, 5x7

Levi

I guess all the gifts are given until now, so I can publish portraits from my session with Levi.

Monique and Levi had an idea to get Levi's collodion portraits as a Christmas gift for his dad.

It was quite an intensive session as Levi is a very restless young man, so we had a little trouble to get a sharp image. At the end and with little tricks we managed to get the results I'm happy with.

Hope Levi's dad likes them too. :)

8x10' black glass ambrotype, Industar 300/f 4.5, 13s, studio lights

8x10' black glass ambrotype, Industar 300/f 4.5, 13s, studio lights

Studio lights for winter time.

Just a short summary on the lights I got recently for WPC indoor photographs.

After considering all the options which were tidily and nicely summarised by Kasia Kesicka HERE I decided to go for a polish version of Falcon Eyes - VITO LAMPS (cheaper)

Their specification is exactly the same as Falcon Eyes, that means I have 2 lamps, each with 9 x E27/28W bulbs(equivalent of 140W each / 1260W in total),light temperature ca.5500K. I have a soft box and reflector for each of them.

I managed to do five sessions, testing lamps with different format cameras and different lenses and the results oscillate between 10 and 16 seconds exposures. (was hoping for less, but it's still not bad, however challenging with children, I might need to look for a brighter lens in the near future)

I am mostly using:

one lamp as a main light with reflector and all 9 bulbs on,

the fill light in different variants - mostly 5 or 7 on, with softbox umbrella only or softbox on,

no other light for background or hair so far.

Lights set as close as possible to model.

Cameras & lenses:

8x10 camera plus Industar 300mm/f 4.5

4x5 Toyo camera plus Schneider Symmar APO 150mm/f 5.6

Here are some examples:

Tamara, 4x5 Toyo,  f 5.6, fill light: softbox + 9 bulbs on, 15 s,

Tamara, 4x5 Toyo,  f 5.6, fill light: softbox  + 5 bulbs on, 16s,

Sharon, 4x5 Toyo,  f 5.6, fill light: softbox umbrella + 7 bulbs on, 12 s.( overexposed)

Sharon, 4x5 Toyo,  f 5.6, main light 8 bulbs on, fill light: softbox umbrella, 5 bulbs on, 12 s.( still slightly overexposed)

Lubor, 4x5,  f 4.5,  fill light: softbox umbrella, 5 bulbs on, 15 s.(overexposed)

Vlad, 8x10,  f 4.5, fill light: softbox umbrella, 7 bulbs on, 12 s.

Anton, 8x10,  f 4.5, fill light: softbox umbrella, 7 bulbs on, 16 s.

Hiawatha's Photographing @ Americana & RootsWeekend

(click the image to enlarge)

The above poster (des. Kasia Kesicka) promoted a collodion portraiture event, which took place during Americana & Roots Weekend in Greystones, (Ireland) last weekend, and was organised by my collodionist friend Kasia Kesicka and myself.

It quotes a poem of Lewis Caroll, British writer and poet, best known as author of 'Alice in Wonderland', who was also a passionate photographer - 'collodionist'. He wrote the above poem about the wet plate collodion process and we decided to honour the event with the same title. (whole poem HERE)

It was a vibrant, very interesting weekend and I must say - everything went very well. We met with a big interest from the public and had quite a few happy clients, who decided to have their own ambrotypes or ferrotypes.

Although we both already worked on location earlier, it was a first time when we took part in re-enactment event, open for the public. We had plenty of concerns (i.e. if and how to varnish plates on the spot), but I think we created a well organised team and managed everything well. (plates taken on Saturday were varnished at home and were ready for collection the following day, and on Sunday plates were varnished on the spot, with traditional varnish)
We also learned a lot from each other as we use different collodion receipts, different equipments and Kasia works mostly with metal plates, myself - with glass.
All in all it was a great experience!

Gallery of ambrotype portraits taken:

This is who I see when I look in the mirror...

...this words I've heard during my Sunday's spontaneous portrait session from one of my sitters...'this is real me, this is how I see myself'.

I found this complement very fulfilling, as this is something I'd be looking for, when portraying people. I'd like to catch the essence of their personality, so when somebody finds himself in my portrait and it goes along with my (collodion:) vision as well, I think I can be satisfied with the result.

I don't know really what makes the collodion portraits more 'soulful'. Is it the stillness, due to the exposure time, which reveal the real person or is it a historical visual association, which we refer to, warmly, as to something more 'real' in the digital era, or maybe just liquidity and grainlessness of collodion?
Whatever it is I think this technique is the one that do justice.
Before I started to use it I hardly took portraits, and when I did I was never happy with the results. There was something missing in them, or I was missing the right tool, to find it.

8x10 black glass ambrotype, Industar 300, f4.5, 5s.

8x10 black glass ambrotype, Industar 300, f4.5, 4s.

8x10 black glass ambrotype, Industar 300, f4.5, 4s.

8x10 clear glass ambrotype, Industar 300, f4.5, 4s.

Industar 4.5/300

Test of new lens - Industar4.5/300 - 10 s exposure, 10x8 clear glass ambrotype

Maciej

Collodion photographs with children..

...are not easy :)
Kun, sitting here in his costiume,  wonderfully managed to keep still for 4 seconds with his 'smile' :)

(4x5 black glass ambrotype, Toyo View C, Symmar APO 5.6/150mm )

Sarah with grandchildren (out of focus)

(4x5 black glass ambrotype, Toyo View C, Symmar APO 5.6/150mm)

...so sometime it's easier to look for some still subject like ...rubber boots

(4x5 black glass ambrotype, Toyo View C, Symmar APO 5.6/150mm )

or growing peas :) (here with some extra features)

(8x10  black glass ambrotype,6.3/305mm ilex paragon )

World Wet Plate Day, 1st May 2011

The 3rd Annual World Wet Plate Day took place yesterday 1st May 2011. I've invited my friends for a presentation of the technique and sitting for portraits. Here are some plates I did to celebrate the day.

Artur

Calin and Andrea

Greg

Andrea

Artur on bike and with mustache ;)  

/by the way well done on comming to Glencree by bike from Dublin!!!!/

As recently the collodion is serving me lot of lessons how to treat it in warm weather ( I'll write about it more soon) , this time it was very kind and only got too thick (I guess that's the reason of the thicker lines on plates, and looks like adding some alcohol helped a bit)

But generally it was a great day. Thank you for joining me!