To keep up with Sparks Gallery, you can visit their website HERE
​You can also visit them on Instagram @sparksgallery 

Today I had the cutest, furriest client ever!
His name is Copper and he is a therapy dog. Having being in the hospital or the doctors often, its important to me that therapy dogs exist and bring comfort. 
I love my job. I love the people I get to meet.
Happy 4th of July weekend everyone 

Last week I went back to my roots of photography, Eastlake High School (not the first place I did photography but...)  to teach demonstrations to all the periods of photo class. My old teacher, Mr. Hinkle, has been following my work for awhile and reached out to me asking to go and talk about the Wet Plate Collodion process and the history of it, then to do a demo in the dark room and shooting portraits outside. 
As many people know, I'm not a very good public speaker, so for me to do something like this is a pretty big deal. But luckily, everything went smoothly and I like to believe I captured some students attention while talking about the process before doing the demo.

A week before doing the demos I went to the school and picked out a spot where I would be shooting, and I found this beautiful Ivy wall where I had nice open shade all the day, and also it was close to the darkroom!

^Photos above were taken by one of the high school students, Anthony Labrador! Thank you Anthony!^

My only mess ups is that during 2nd period teachings I accidentally dropped a plate on the floor and a student caught it on film (oh well....)
More photos to come from behind the scenes soon! Will update as soon as I get those images. 
Plates below are the best ones that came out! And also very appropriate for the release of Star Wars!

Thank you to Mr. Hinkle and to Eastlake High School for having me at the school and to be able to share the Wet Plate Collodion process with you and your students!

I would also like to note that on the second day of teaching I wore a white tank top underneath my flannel and I didn't get a drop of silver on it, even after packing up all my chemistry. 

Last week I was lucky enough to join other fellow wet plate photographers out to the Anza Borrego desert to do some wet plate tintypes and some negatives. 

Upon arriving in the desert I quickly found out that my plate holder lock broke, so of course it was fixed with a piece of tape. But with that happening I noticed that my camera had a big light leak problem, so I was mostly able to do two plates.
It was also my first experience of doing tray developing instead of hand pouring onto the plate. I for sure can say that I'm in need of practice to do this hand and finger motion a couple of times before posting any work using this technique. 

Better late than never! Stereographs that were taken at Old Town San Diego on 4th of July. 
Stereographs taken by Dave Smith and NicK Hidek 
Single tintypes taken by me. 

Tradesmen

Hey guys! I'm here to share with you the tintypes that I did at the Tradesmen - creative proprietors & charitable pour house at the beginning of this month. I was contacted a few weeks ago to do tintypes of all the historical homes that Stepheni and her father, Stephen, and husband Michael have rehabilitated and now have a new life. 
This home is a 1886 Victorian Stick style home, in East Village. 

The Tradesmen house is a place where you and your small business can work and conduct meetings. They have 7 unique rooms in the house ranging in sizes of the space to get your work done! I wish that wet plate had the power to be able to do exposures inside of a home, but alas. It’s too dark! The inside has a lovely modern and vintage feel to the space. 

The tintypes below where at the exposure time of 2 secs to 3 secs. Using a rapid rectilinear lens up until the last two plates where I switched to my voightlander lens. The first two plates are the size of 3 1/2 by 5 and the last plate is an 5x7 plate.

I will be working again with Tradesmen on the other properties that they have restored! So stay tuned :) 

 

Some behind the scene photos!