*please note that these blogs are not in time order. Lots to catch up on my site as far as adventures go*

Date: Sometime in 2022

2022 is off to a good but slow start as far as opportunity goes to teach photography up in the mountains. In the past when asked to teach workshops, I usually say no due to lack of experience and social anxiety. But when one on one workshops are asked for, I absolutely say yes. Working with Joni Sternbach and seeing how she teaches really inspired me to start saying “Yes” more.

By random chance while working in Old Town San Diego doing my usual pop up, a man that was biking around stoped in front is and got excited that he found someone by chance that was going wet plate! I gave him my card and set a date on when to teach.

What I’m starting to implement more when I work is to write a physical list of talking points I want to go over and a timeline of doing certain exercises and then a shopping list. Having lists help keep me in order and one of the first things I listed was to purchase a wet plate collodion manual from Scully & Osterman Studio , it was one of the firsts that I was introduced to when I started in 2013 and still use to this day. Not to mention that I have taken classes from Mark Osterman himself before he retired from the Eastman House Museum in Rochester. I stand by all the information listed in the book which includes lists of where to get chemistry in the US and how to handle yourself safely when working in the darkroom. I can’t also forget one of the main parts of the book that I always encourage people to read, the history of the process itself. For without it, we wouldn’t have what we have today.

Karthik did such a good job pouring and developing as the day went on, thankfully I took some behind the scenes pictures of the different lighting situations we did together and on the second day of teaching he even brought his own 4x5 3D printed camera! It really helped him to work using his own equipment so he can do practicing on his own.

It was really special to me to share the space that grew up in learning photography. I cant wait to take on more students this year.

For about a little over a month I have been MIA due to travel, but now that I have been back, and officially doing wet plate again, I have something to show for it. 
For the past year my friend (and mentor) Dave, has been adding on to his Mancave studio, to have an indoor shooting area rather than shooting outside. And like the rest of studio, it 1880's themed. 
So on Thursday I met up with Nick & Dave and my dad came along and we did a soft run through of the studio and testing out the 7 month old collodion we had.
Now, most of plates from Thursday involve Daves cat, LB (a.k.a Lover Boy). Once I saw him falling asleep on the chair I couldn't resist!
All of my 5x7 plates were taken using my Voigtlander lens. 
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Couldn't resist doing a crop of this place because I felt impressed on the sharpness of this plate! 

The Full Plates below were shot with a Dallmeyer 3A lens, using Daves rolling studio camera. 

​Towards the end of the day we started getting artifacts on the plate as soon as we fixed them (using KCN). I'm still not sure of the cause. You can it in the last two plates. 

After months of not doing wet plate and not practicing my pouring skills at all, I was worried that I was losing my edge with the process, but now that I started again I feel a bit better about my pouring abilities. Even Dave got to do some tintypes to! 

Fun fact! See the curtains that are hanging up against the wall? They belonged to Alfred Cheney Johnston! Dave started collecting some of his studio belongings years and ago, and now that the posing part of the studio is next to complete, my mum and I got the task to re-sew some of the fabric lining together and fixing some holes.