My Wetplate Process in Calgary this Weekend!

Part of email on the wet plate process in Calgary.

“On Saturday I spent a 12-hour day making Ambrotypes in downtown Calgary on a bridge near Chinatown.

The process is called wet plate collodion. You have about a 10–15-minute window to make the glass plate (with a photographic emulsion on it), make a picture onto the glass and then develop it before everything dries up and you lose the image.

In Calgary, I had to park my darkroom trailer far away from my camera positions. So to get back and forth fast enough I tried a new idea for the first time. I bought and used an e-scooter! So all of Saturday I first worked in the darkroom and made the plate, then scootered down to my camera (my wife sat in a chair all day watching my expensive gear at three locations), took the photo, then scootered back up a big hill to the darkroom trailer and developed and fixed the Ambrotype before it dried out.

So, after a 12-hour day of doing that I was pretty much spent! 

All that night I had to wash and dry the 14 plates made that day in the hotel parking lot. I had to get up and change out the washing plates every two hours, change the water, then dry the plates and pack the plates. In Edmonton I still need to varnish the glass Ambrotype plates. This is an 1851-year process, so a ton of steps. I admire the old guys who did this, back in Queen Victoria times. They had no e-scooters to help them out!”