New Large Plates: Jimmy Abegg

Yesterday, we made three large plates of good friend Jimmy Abegg, here at my house with the homemade collodion camera. Three plates in three hours; not bad I guess. Thanks also to Samantha Angel for great assistance with the chemistry and the workflow. Everything about this process goes “against the rules” of how the real collodion guys do things, but we are learning as we go. Once you go up in size, and leave the traditional plexi compartment workflow, it all gets dicey. We had some silver issues; not sure why. We had some skimming issues; not sure why. Hopefully the varnish will cover over my mistakes. Below are the actual black aluminum metal plates, (24″x28″) that we load into the camera. Each one is a mono print; no negative, no copies (unless you rephotograph it).

Jimmy, in my back yard, as we were washing the plates.

Plate #3, probably my favorite. We called this one: “Scholarly Moroccan writer”.

Plate #2: We called this one “Amish Preacher”.

Plate #1: We called this one, (as we were laughing): “Dust Bowl preacher, 1945: “Damnit kids, I told you to git out of my yard, or I’m gonna go git my shotgun!”.