Artist's Sketchbook with Tintype Cover

Very excited to be heading to the BUST Craftacular at Maker Faire in September. If you are in the city, stop by and check out the Tin Gypsy’s tintypes and unique creations. My favorite is a coptic bound artist’s sketch book, with tintype covers. Pretty sweet. More info about the event here: http://www.bust.com/craftacular/craftacular-home.html

The Tin Gypsy riding through the Ranier National Forest

We’ve been on the road with the Gypsy for over a week now and everything is going great! We have traveled out to the Kite Festival in Long Beach, to the eastern part of Washington where we found giant wind turbines and abandoned barns, to Seattle where we had a wonderful Photobooth event with the vibrant photo community there, and then up the coast to Anacortes where I made some beautiful plates at Deception Pass and now we have landed in Bellingham where we will be spending today searching for unique sites to make plates and tomorrow will be another great Photobooth event. Friday we are on to Astoria, where we will be hosted by Lightbox Gallery for our final Photobooth event of this maiden voyage. We’ve had some great times and have met so many wonderful new friends… This maiden voyage has been a rousing success!

The History:
This project takes its inspiration from the earliest practitioners of photography, who were as much scientists and inventors as they were artists. They used creativity and lots of trial and error to devise ingenious techniques for making photographs. What really draws me to the practice of early photographic methods, like Wet Plate Collodion and Albumen Printing, is the process. It’s a slower, more intimate and handmade experience than many modern photographic practices. There is a feeling of mystery and magic and a little bit of danger… mixing chemicals, coating plates, watching the images slowly appear on the metal or glass as the developer works- it’s all really amazing to me.

One of these early techniques, the Wet Plate Collodion Process (invented in 1854) must be completed within just a few minutes, before the light-sensitive collodion solution dries on the metal or glass plate and renders the image impossible to develop. In order to successfully execute this process, the photographer must have his or her darkroom nearby. In the 19th Century, some photographers wanted to take the wet plate process outside of the studio and into the field, so horse-drawn carts and buggies were retrofitted as mobile darkrooms.

Traveling portrait photographers were then able to wander the country with their mobile darkrooms, making photographs of people in the small towns and cities they traveled through. These portrait photographers produced small albumen and tintype ‘cartes de visite’ and cabinet cards that were very affordable and wildly popular for a time. Traveling darkrooms were also used by documentary photographers who wanted to travel onto the battlefield to photograph the soldiers and scenes of the Civil War.

It’s been an amazing experience for me to connect with the historical beginnings of photography through the study and practice of these antique photographic techniques. I love the distinctive appearance of the tintypes, ambrotypes, and albumen prints and each unique process of creating them. Each time I make a new plate or coat another sheet of paper to make a print, I know that the resulting image will be absolutely one-of-a-kind and handmade. And that’s totally awesome.

http://photographymuseum.org/histsw.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte_de_visite

I have assembled a small collection of Cartes de Visite and Tintypes from the 19th Century. These tiny treasures from the past inform and inspire my own plans to create a carte de visite that both draws from and honors the history of the form, yet also reinvents it in my own artistic style.

I would love to recreate some of the details of the original Cartes, like the decorative embossing and use of lovely fonts to mark the name of photographer’s studio onto the back of the image.

Using these historical Cartes as guides, I am developing a few prototypes for my own Cartes de Visite.

Here are a couple early versions of framing motifs that I am working on. Once the development stage is finished, these framing designs will be letterpressed onto the face of the Cartes.

My favorite wet plate session to date was with the most fabulous of local burlesque performers, Miss Baby LeStrange. We had a great time working together… and the fabulous sparkles and fringe and feathers of her vintage costumes were truly amazing to photograph!