Ron, ghost hunter.

Last week I went to a wet plate collodion workshop at the wonderful Photographers' Formulary in the mountains of Montana, led by Will Dunniway.

This was the first image where it all came together for me (with Will's help), made with a French whole plate camera, built in Paris circa 1860, with a Dallmeyer 3b portrait lens.

View larger. But really I want everyone to see (and feel and smell) this in the flesh. Computer screens are for chumps...

While the 6' high piles of shovelled snow in our front yard might suggest otherwise, the midday light in our kitchen is shouting SPRING!

Farewell, sweet Polaroid.

I picked up a quirky little book at the last Crappy Camera Club meeting: Picture Making with Paper Negatives, by Nowell Ward, first published in 1938. I read it in bed when I got home and got thoroughly inspired. The process outlined in the book is basically very simple, though long-winded, and I followed it pretty closely to make this picture:

1. The negative was made with Yashica Mat 124G, Tri-X, red filter. Developed in HC-110. This was taken back in my artist residency last summer.

2. I made a paper positive with the enlarger, on expired Kodabromide, projected like a regular print, but over-exposed by about a stop. Developed in expired (and pretty oxidised) Dektol.

3. Then I made a paper negative by contact printing the paper positive. Exposure time was about a minute, using the enlarger as a light source, lens wide open. Same paper and dev.

4. The final print made by contact printing the paper negative, this time the exposure was just 15 secs. Same paper and dev.

Each step is dependent on getting exposure right on each of the previous steps, so it takes a bit of experimentation (and luck), especially to tame the crazy contrast (which I mostly failed to do).

And yes, there's some paper kitchen towel action going on in there too.

I'm probably in the background for one or two of the shots, and my photos are in there somewhere, but Clementine's the real star...

via Mr Maynard