On June 2nd and 3rd I took a tintype workshop at the Visual Arts Center in Richmond.  This was my first time trying the wet plate process.  I’ve shot just about everything else, so I guess it was time :-).  It was taught by Michael Bartolotta.  He teaches several tintype workshops each year.  So, if you’re interested in the process, I’d highly recommend his workshop.  He gave a brief history, gave a demo of the process, and we were off shooting.  I have a 4×5 view camera that I’d bought back in the 80’s, so I brought that along.  But he has several cameras for class members to use, so you need not bring anything other than yourself.

Here are a few of the images I made in the two day workshop.  (the color of the scans varies somewhat, and that’s due to my scanning.  The plates have a slight sepia tint after they are dried and varnished)

First plate 🙂 Exposure was pretty good for my first guess. 8 seconds at f/8
Second plate. I used a gold reflector to push a bit of light into the dark part of the flower arrangement.
We were fighting rain all weekend, so we started inside. The rain stopped for a bit, so I found this view off the balcony on the back of the building.
Mannequins in the fabric studio downstairs. It had started raining again, so I’d gone looking for indoor subjects.
First plate on day 2. I was planning a self portrait and shot this first plate as a light test.
Self portrait, using an air bulb release.
I tried a reflection photo in the door…with somewhat sucky results.
There was a glass blowing class going on at Visarts the same weekend. I turned the camera around from the self portrait and shot a plate of the class in action.
Mike was shooting a portrait of one of the other class members, so I set the camera up for this somewhat “behind the scenes” photo.
Mike took a portrait of each of us.
Class photo. There were three of us in the class, but one member couldn’t attend on Sunday due to flooding in her area.

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