Old Project Revisited : 'Seeing In These Walls'

Old Project Revisited : 'To The End and Back', Pakistan 2004

1st collodion shoot at home ... trial and error!

These first few plates were our first attempt in the homemade darkroom without Mr Brewer looking over our shoulder giving us advice.  It didn't start off the best, I ended up getting some poultry feed calcium carbonate derived from limestone.  This was an ebay error and am currently waiting for the real white stuff.  Using the wrong cleaning agent definitely had an effect on the glass plates but at least we were getting some kind of image so not all bad!

This is our first attempt on tin plate.  It was the end of the day so the light was constantly changing and making it pretty difficult to guess the exposure which up until now wasn't giving us too much trouble.  I quite like the spookyness of this tin plate though, it could be a poster for a horror film or something.

Attempt No. 2

With these glass plates we opted to clean them with good old fashioned fairy liquid and buffing them clean.  It definitely made a different in the way the collodion fixed to the plate and eventually we managed start solving where we were going wrong with each plate.  Sometime the plates were not clean enough, sometimes light leaked when removing and replacing the dark slide.  I always like the imperfections on the plates but after a while is become irritating and I feel the need to diagnose and fix the problems.  Anyway these exposure came out pretty good and most of the plates were developed successfully.

Next week we are going to shoot some more plates, try and perfect our technique and exposure intuition!  
Can't wait to get our dark box on the road then we can take the camera out and do some landscapes.

P.S NO EDITING HAS BEEN APPLIED TO THESE IMAGES, THEY HAVE JUST BEEN SCANNED AND UPLOADED

For now .... we have a dark box

Here's our travel size darkroom built kindly by Mike's dad based on other darkbox/darkroom ideas found all over google.  Just need some legs and a giant black sock.

Just given it a quick primer coat then a spray with regular matt black paint.  This picture is from midway through the process so it ain't so patchy now!

Can't wait to get my 10x8 old school camera from the states in December, this will be the perfect size for the plates when we're on the road.  Undecided whether or not to build shelves into the box or build a box within the box that can store most things when we are out and about in a car.