Tin Types

On Saturday my friend Gary came over to make some tin types of the girls.  Gary is really in to alternative process photography... and really good at it.  I made some special plastic trays at the shop for him, a couple of months ago.  I refused to accept payment for them, but in exchange I asked him to do a portrait session with the girls.
Tin Type is an antique process that dates back to the 1860's.  It involves sensitizing a metal plate with a mixture of silver nitrate and collodion.  While the plate is still wet, it is loaded into the camera and exposed, and then immediately needs to be processed.  The resulting images are one of a kind.

Gary set up a portable darkroom on the street in front of our house.  Here he sensitized an aluminum plate and loaded it into a special film holder.  The three girls posed in front of the apple tree.  Gary then loaded his film holder into his 8" x 10" Deardorff camera and took the exposure.  The plate was then immediately taken back to his portable darkroom where is was processed with a vinegar based developer, and then fixed.  We washed the plate and then the tin type was essentially complete.  Gary took the finished tin types home with him so that he could complete the process of washing them, and then coating them with a protective finish of varnish.  Notice that the finished image is reversed right to left from the original scene.  

This description sounds a lot simpler than it actually was.  First a test shot was needed to determine exposure, and then there was the usual prerequisite arguing with the girls to get them to cooperate and stop fighting.  We took two seperate shots, one exposed slightly longer than the other.  Many thanks to Gary for his patience and his effort in producing something very unique and special for the girls.  All the more special because the day was Annelise's 9th birthday!