“Flight Instruction” Copyright Alex Timmermans
My photographic interests are fairly broad, from modern digital all the way back to the antique or alternative processes. That’s why I was very happy to see this short video Escape To Nature about Alex Timmermans and his wet plate collodion photography. It was shot by Patrice Lesueur, and is beautiful in its own right. Take a look…
If you can’t see the video above, please click here.
From the Encyclopedia Britanica here: Wet-collodion process, also called collodion process: early photographic technique invented by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. The process involved adding a soluble iodide to a solution of collodion (cellulose nitrate) and coating a glass plate with the mixture. In the darkroom the plate was immersed in a solution of silver nitrate to form silver iodide. The plate, still wet, was exposed in the camera. It was then developed by pouring a solution of pyrogallic acid over it and was fixed with a strong solution of sodium thiosulfate, for which potassium cyanide was later substituted. Immediate developing and fixing were necessary because, after the collodion film had dried, it became waterproof and the reagent solutions could not penetrate it. The process was valued for the level of detail and clarity it allowed. A modification of the process, in which an underexposed negative was backed with black paper or velvet to form what was called an ambrotype, became very popular from the mid- to late 19th century, as did a version on black lacquered metal known as a tintype, or ferrotype.