Email to a Akido friend talking about KANATA....
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Yes Richard it is a really cool process. If you want to try it
sometime let me know. Basically you put collodion on a plate, then light
sensitize it before exposing it. You make your own film! The wet plate
part is that you need to do, the coating of the plate, to the
development, before the plate (glass or metal) dries out. You have like
10-15 minutes or so to complete everything depending on humidity and
other factors. Of course a thousand things can go wrong and do, and also
there is a fair amount of danger with the chemistry. The chemicals can
include explosive, flammable things like ether, alcohol and cancerous
chemicals like Cadmium Bromide. So learning all the safety stuff and
handling everything safely is part of the learning curve.
You
also have the option of using KCN as a fixer (Potassium Cynanide) but
am unsure if I will go down that road. Lots of photographers in the old
days would die young. They would do stupid shit like drink the alcohol
used in the process in their mobile darkrooms (you need to take you
darkroom with you to where you make your pictures). The stories go that
sometimes in the dark when they were drunk they would drink the fix
(Potassium Cyanide mixed with distilled water) instead of the grain
alcohol! Which equals one dead photographer. I will probably stick to
traditional fixer Sodium Thiosulfate (Hypo), which is very safe.
The
plan is to do a 10-15 year wet plate project, pictures on glass called
Ambrotypes, on the subject of CANADA (KANATA). So will be doing
portraits, and landscapes with some cityscapees and still lifes thrown
in. Hopefully can do a few portraits of club members along the way. Want
to pose? :) They might look something like this, see attachment (photo
is a ambrotype made by a friend in Thailand, he is doing a series on
Thai Buddhist monks).
Wood working sounds challenging, never been good at that sort of thing myself.
Thanks Gerry
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| Great Photograph, an Ambrotype made by Chardchakaj Waikawe |
