May 1st 2011
This year of the first sunday in May is now booked as World Wet Plate Day 2011, this allows you wet plate lovers to organize your own Wet Plate Day event and let wetplateday.org know, by doing this they will put your event in the event list for more exposure. This day is to celebrate the work of the artists who practice the photographic technique today, keeping the traditional photographic method alive.
Collodion Wet Plates is a photographic process of pouring Collodion onto a plate of thin iron or glass, then exposing and developing that plate while it’s still wet! This process was the main photographic method from the early 1850s until the late 1880s and it replaced paper negatives/Calotypes (Talbot) and Daguerreotypes (Louis Daguerre). The rebirth of the Wet Plate process is largely due to the accessibility of digital photography and because of the individuality of using Collodion creating a unique image every time. By making Wet Plate Collodion images on this day, you will share the experience with the 1850s founders, the 1870s portrait artist or traveling tintypist, and today’s revivalists. By uploading your favorite plate on to the Wet Plate Day site, your work will be enjoyed by all. Here are some examples of the beautiful process taken by Quinn Jacobson and John Brewer, who are both talented Wet Plate artists.
