Fanny the new motorhome for the cross Canada 15 year wet plate photography project preformed flawlessly in my first two day trip out of the city. The next step will be to attach the darkroom trailer and move on from there.
Here is an email I wrote to a local photography club on the last few days.
Hey folks at the club. I have not written you good people for a while, thought I wold give you an update on the AMBROTOS KANATA 15 year cross Canada wet plate project.
Three weeks ago I purchased an older motorhome with a nice Diesel engine for the work. The new-used 2000, 28 foo Type C RV will pull my 5000lb mobile wet plate trailer darkroom around Canada. It will also provide a mobile/ sleeping, eating and bathing (wet plate covers you in smelly chemicals) home on the road.
I took the motorhome which is nicknamed “FANNY” (named after the wife of the inventor of wet plate collodion Frederick Scott Archer) on the road for the first time Friday-Saturday. She was wonderful to live in, my wife Lisa and one of our two cats also enjoyed her comforts (thou they freaked at the engine noise).
Last week I also got a 8000lb hitch set up put together with a brake controller and a weight distribution set up (the trailer is rated to 10000lbs, the hitch to 8000lbs, I plan to carry no more than 5000lbs).
The plan is to take the motorhome and the darkroom trailer along with the smaller 8x10 Deardorff and 16x20 Chamonix cameras and lens on the road in less than two weeks for the first series of photographs. In the beginning I plan on shooting easy subjects including Elk Island Park and the big egg in Vegreville (oddly Canadian). Easy subjects to start as I get used to moving 45 feet of vehicles and figuring how to get glass, chemistry and expensive camera gear travelling down highways at 96km per hour without damage. The bigger 20x24 and 35x35 HF camera stuff comes later.
ANY PHOTO SUGGESTIONS TO THE EAST OF EDMONTON? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
If any of you want to see the set up on the road or try out making ambrotypes, send me a message. I hope to be doing some wetplate/project talks later this year. In July-August-September I will be travelling to the mountains and possibly the sand dunes in Saskatchewan as well as other locals making ambrotypes. I hope to do serious photography on social subjects, subjects that include First Nation issues and environmental damage photography as the project progresses. I also hope to dive head first into portrait work.
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