My Grandfather Kenny Robbins and his Harley Davidson

While cleaning the studio today I stumbled across a creased and aged envelope….tucked inside and marked in my Grandmother’s steady hand, were B&W 6×9 negatives shot by my Grandfather, Kenneth Robbins. Sadly my Grandfather died long before I was ever born.

He was a major Photography enthusiast and often made movies as well of my family, many date back to the 1920′s. It is quiet a legacy he left us with his imagery. It was through his images that I learned how to observe light and to appreciate Photography as a Fine Art.

So today, while wet mount scanning these delicate old negatives, it struck me how incredible it is that here I sit in the year 2011, scanning and revealing images that my Grandfather shot in 1937. Photos that give me a peek at the early days of my Mother’s life…of my own eyes.

Last weekend we had the pleasure of participating in the Accessible Art Fair at the Conrad hotel in Brussels, Belgium. It was a exciting fun filled weekend and we met and spoke with at least 3000 people in those two and a half days.

This year we brought our Wet Plate Ambrotypes and Albumen hand pulled Prints along to showcase. The public were very receptive to this historic techniques and enjoyed very much looking through our 100+ year old Charten Whole Plate camera.

We demonstrated the Collodion Wet Plate process in a dry manner due to the fact we were inside a very swanky hotel, but I believe the concept came across to everyone.

Here are a few images from the event and we hope to return again with something new again in 2011.

Thank you to everyone who came out in support to see us in Brussels!

After beating my head to design a proper Poster to market the collection an amazing college friend from Ringling stepped in and created this incredible marketing package for me. Curry Mendes’ skills are endless and to him I am ever grateful.

You can catch “Eine Amerikanische Perspektive” at the Ladenburg Rathaus from
15 October thru 29 November 2010.

We loaded all the chemicals, cameras, dark box and other incidentals into my husband’s Classic Land Rover, (Landy) and drove out into the fields. After finding an interesting location we started to set up. There has been an issue all along with the used dark box we purchased from another Photographer who was giving up Wet Plate…though it saved us a lot of trouble of building one ourselves, we discovered the vast difference in size and height between my husband and I really played an issue when it came time to using the box. The legs affixed to the box were just too short for him so he decided to try and mount the box in the back cargo area of the Landy.

It worked perfectly!! We both were able to produce 2 plates each before the heat and thirst chased us back home.

I liken the experience to a “Fish Tale”. I had the first two beautiful plates float away in the fix bath, BUT I was smart enough to get a digital snap of it…since there was no one there to witness the event.

After using black glass for the first 2 pours and having lost those images I switched to black aluminum. I had no issues with the glass inside the silver bath as they are heavy but apparently the metal floated on me and the silver coating stopped an inch from the top. I exposed it anyway and it turned out to be one of my favorites.

Two hours into it, I was finally getting into the rhythm of working inside the dark box….even with the low light I was still able to see properly to develop the plates, when the skies opened up and chased me speedily for cover. That is after I raced the camera indoors.

I just submitted my contribution to the event…too bad you can call a rain date.

Here is “The One That Got Away”

Due to time constraints, my husband and I shot in tandem, while I was developing a shot or preparing a late he was exposing a plate and visa versa. This process seemed to work well and we were able to, with a very patient model, to produce 4 plates in 2 hours. A very happy Herman was able to leave for Belgium with a varnished plate in hand.

He and his lovely wife did a small slideshow presentation of us at work and well….Herman just hanging around.

http://picasaweb.google.fr/h.riachuelo/AmbrotypePhotography#slideshow/5459213582537943090

I hope you enjoy it…and while I have your attention, make sure to check out some of Herman’s amazing work on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogWIAszSF78

It was a fantastic learning experience for me and I now know for me to continue working with this process I definitely need a dark box or mobile darkroom.  It also showed me in greater detail the limitations this process creates…I have started my list of accessible locations and also my mind is spinning as to how to make getting the dark box to certain locations possible.  Very exciting.

Seeing these beautiful ruins captured in this Historic Technique was breathtaking.  These images Quinn captured on this day will be exhibited in London at the Frederick Scott Archer Ceremony

Please take a moment to view the small slideshow of images from the day and also take some time to look through Quinn’s amazing site and his many on going projects.

So today, we are back in the studio shooting and justifying our indulgent purchases by making them into Art…or at least attempting to.  Seems you do a lot more cleaning of glass than actually capturing images on it but all good things take time.  BUT, my ratio of cleaning to keeping is definitely getting better.

Here is the result of my visit to the vegetable isle yesterday.  I have to admit, this darkroom stuff is really starting to become a habit!  I think Fruit will follow Fungus today…

In the past few months we have added a new skill to the Boston Thek Imagery bag O tricks, Wet Plate Alternative Process. It has become a bit of an obsession with us here in the studio. Each evening we spend many hours racing between the studio with it’s still life set up and the darkroom.

CollodionWet Plate might be a timeless process, but there is definitely and finite amount of time for each shot. Once you have a prepared plate for the Ambrotype, you have to get it into the camera and exposed before you loose everything in the ether from which it came.

In my experience, you learn to clean glass very well in the process of learning, well…this historic process. There are many small factors that can go wrong when pouring and preparing a plate. Sagging Collodion to hot finger marks from handling, dust and improperly cleaned glass to not letting the Collodion dry long enough thus causing the image to peel from the plate.

Then there are no guarantees once you’ve taken the shot. Will the image be properly exposed? Will you miss a spot with the developer? The fearful questions are endless but so is the excitement of producing a perfect plate.

This process is an enigma, it certainly has a mind of it’s own….

With all that said…here is my best result to date. A still life of snowdrops I plucked along my way through the thawing fields around my town.

We will continue to keep adding to our photographic bag of tricks.