Trip to the Salton Sea

5:58am – I’ve been up since five am and I still don’t know what to pack to be ready. Starting to wonder if waking up so early was worth it. 

9:00am – Fernando and I finally arrived in Brawley, Ca to meet up with another good wet plate photographer that we know, Anton Orlov, and his girlfriend Jocelyn, to go take pictures at the Slaton Sea and the surrounding areas. The amazing thing about this trip is that its my first time to the sea and getting to see Antons Photo Palace, which he renovated into a darkroom for the process.

9:58am – After leaving the hotel we started driving out towards the Slaton Sea and came across a cooling factory that was steaming and decided to take tintypes of it before moving on. I also got to see Antons really cool 8x20 Korona Camera and got to see him compose a picture and watch the developing and fixing of the plate. 

11:19am – Dear bloggers, I have never sweated this much in my entire days of doing Photo shoots. The darkroom has no air conditioning, and there is little wind as well. My phone tells me its 101 degrees but it feels like 108.

3:17am- A couple of minutes after I typed in last time log entry, a supervisor came and kicked us off the property and so we drove around for a view hours and ended up at Salton City Beach and parked the bus. Upon arrival a car parked by us asked what we were up to and it turns out we met Buzzy Sullivan! Whom is a photographer and dabbles in wet plate as well and trained under the same person that Anton did! Small world. 

Anton, Fernando, Buzzy, Bella

Buzzys dog, Bella!

6:36am- Three hours later we are all drenched in sweat and exhaustion. Anton was kind and let me use one of his cameras take a tintype! I tried my best to use a camera that I haven’t seen or handled before, so I poured my collodion and dipped it into the silver then loaded it in the camera and expose the plate and took it back to the darkroom to open it up and I find that my plate disappeared! At first I was so confused on what happened then realized that the plate was to small for the holder and fell off in the camera. So attempt one, failed.
I went off exploring with Jocelyn for a little while and she was kind enough to let me photograph her! One of my summer goals is to work with people more and do more portraits, which is NOT one of my strong points as a photographer. Thank you Jocelyn!!! She also likes to do black and white film photography. 

It was interesting to learn about how the Salton Sea beaches are made of crushed fish bones instead of sea shells.

Antons Photo Palace! 

The camera that Anton was so kind to let me use!

All in all, It was a good day minus the heat and the sweat and never finding enough good bathrooms. I'm very thankful that I at least got one tintype from the trip and that I actually got up in morning to experience the Salton Sea. I'm not sure if I would ever come back to do tintypes in the summer.