First you need a 116 year old wooden camera, a mobile darkroom & some very toxic & flammable chemicals.
Photographer Ken Miner has been doing ‘wet plate’ photography for a number of years now…a photographic technique that came into style back around 1860.
Back then, metal plates were used…never tin, oddly…but for our demonstration Ken uses an aluminium plate which gets very carefully coated with a collodion solution.
You might want to get dress up a bit like Walter White to do this…it’s extremely toxic and some of the chemicals are very flammable.
Long story short, you slide the wet plate into the camera, open the lenses cap, have your subject hold very still for 5 or 6 seconds, shutter the lens and then rush to plate back to your nearby darkroom to develop.
Less than a minute later, you have a reverse image, black & white photo with a sepia tone on a large aluminium plate.
Gordie Tupper
