The 6th annual World Wet Plate Day was celebrated yesterday, May 2. Collodion artists from all over the world made and contributed images to the event's web site www.wetplateday.org. If you can, take several minutes to peruse this year's image gallery--you will be well-rewarded--and if you have the time, look through the previous years' galleries as well--I found many intriguing, beautiful, and thoughtful photographs and was impressed and inspired by the wide variety of subjects, ideas, and techniques.
I spent my World Wet Plate Day happily photographing onion flowers in my garden, a flowerbed in my yard, and attempting a portrait of my neighbor. For several weeks I'd been experiencing a lot of frustration with chemistry and I'm always battling underexposure with my rather slow lens, so it was lovely to have a day where I ended up with some comparatively successful images and learned a lot from those that were not so successful.
I submitted this image of onion flowers to 2015 World Wet Plate Day gallery. Technically, it's a bit overexposed, but with the struggles I have with underexposure, this is an achievement!
Onions 5x7 alumitype, 5/2/2015
Here's a wider view of the onion bed that I think works pretty well. There's some nice contrast among the onions and the image has a vintage feel that I really like.
5x7 alumitype, 5/2/2015
Although there are a few underexposed areas along the underside of the bird bath and in the background in this image, I was still really pleased with how it came out.
5x7 alumitype, 5/2/2015
Because of the shady porch setting, it was struggle to get a decent portrait of my neighbor, but he was patient and let me do four takes--as I battled underexposure. This was the best and ended up overexposed...except for the head and shoulders, which still seem a bit underexposed to me. There isn't near enough contrast and my take away lesson from this portrait session is that with my lens, I need to just get my subjects out into the direct sunlight!
5x7 alumitype, 5/2/2015