Sam Cornwell

Wet Plate Collodion
Control: Photographer vs Women.
Pamplona!
The Quest For The Aura.
Synaesthesia, A Party Political Poster.
Pillgwenlly Working Prints
Camera Equipment

Biography
Contact

Dorothea Lange? Migrant Mother? This is a 5x4" wet plate photograph of a mother feeding her child. It has been created using the wet plate collodion process with the help of silver nitrate. This is a fully finished and varnished plate, which you can tell is a touch overexposed.

I shoot photographs on plate, using the wet plate collodion technique. Here's a recent example of utilising the mess in my backyard for a spooky picture. It's a complete straight scan of the plate, which is pretty dirty because I dropped it whilst varnishing. Oops!

Tried something different this afternoon. This is Bev sleeping in a dimly lit room. The windows had quite a bit of light coming through but certainly not suitable for wet-plate. To get it right this had to be an 8 minute exposure at f/8. I’m not sure why the curtains have gone yellow but I think that’s because of overdeveloping. The grain on the left and right - no idea again. And the black edges are my poor dev pouring, although I thought I’d done a good job when I was doing it in the darkroom.

Anyway, something different that I’ll experiment with again.

Wet Plate Collodion method

On Sunday my nephew Rhys came over to play. He’s only 10 and loves football. Chelsea in particular. He actually asked me if we could do some wet plate photography of him, which gave me the perfect opportunity to trial out my new blue Traffolyte plates that I’d picked up recently. I was also genuinely surprised that he remembered the process from last week when we came round. “Pour on the collodion, dip it the plate into the silver nitrate, developer and then fix. He even corrected me by reminding me I had to varnish afterwards. Good lad!

Here’s the two we shot against the wall. He prefers the one where he doesn’t look mean!

Shot using the wet plate collodion technique.

This is one of my first attempts at a wet plate. It's my Dad.

© Sam Cornwell. Built with 500px

Hey, this photo is © Sam Cornwell