Last year I was gifted a stereo-camera from my good friend Dave, along with a pair of Darlot (don't know that year unfortunately, no serial number is engraved in the lens) portrait lenses. I knew from the start that this was something I wanted to incorporate into my art and my small business. So my dad and I came up with a way to display the tintypes and how to cut plates on site. 
Next was to figure out our scene. I knew I wanted to keep a historical look. I found the perfect backdrop and next came the furniture, luckily I was able to borrow and settee and a traditional posing table (Thanks Dave!). 
The stereo-tintypes pictured below feature my friend, Zoe, who on a day to day basis dresses like she's from 1860-1920's. It was recommended to me by the head of the Trade Fair for 3D-Con, David Richardson, that I take examples of my set up to display what I would be bringing to the con, so everyone that attended would get an idea of what the set up would be for portraits.

I can truly say, that 3D-Con was the busiest two days of my photography career thus far. 
Between the dates of August 12&13 my dad and I created 34 stereo-tintypes. A new record for us. Also a new record for how much I can tolerate the smell of ether!
I have met some really wonderful people and so happy that everyone was patient when it came to change of lighting or just over-run by people wanting to see how the wet plate process worked. 
Saturday was the best day out of the two, the early morning was nice and overcast, so I had no need to use of the pop up canopy.......up until maybe  around 12:30 the sun started to pop out and had to use the canopy for shade. 
Luckily I was able to take some pictures on phone of some of the good results. 

While my dad and I were outside with the darkroom, my mum was inside the Trade Fair handling our small display table with examples and a history about the Wet Plate process.  Thank you Mum!

Photos above  by Denis Pellerin  , you can also find these on his instagram!

All in all, I'm very happy that I was able to make it to 3D-Con. The past couple of months and especially August, I haven't been doing well from a complication from my chronic-illness, and the same week as 3D-Con I ended up having a medical procedure done and then hopped back to work. Although this site is dedicated to my art and work, I feel like its important to talk about how some artists out there have chronic illnesses (like me) and how it can stand in the way of creating art (will have to dive into this topic another day) I want to thank everyone that had been around me that weekend, I hope to keep in contact with the many people I have met. 
Until next time!

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. 

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. 
​ 

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. 

9. We then fixed the plate using Sodium Thiosulfate.

10. Then gilded with Gold Chloride and sodium thiosulfate. 

After working with the wet plate process for years and doing this was a bit of a reality check to me. Daguerreotypes are hard. The prep time for these can take awhile and it makes me appreciate how with wet plate how everything can be quick when you know what your doing. 
I hope to be doing more of these in the future!