Wet Plate Collodion

This is Frederick Scott Archer’s 1851 photography process that Richard taught himself during the COVID lockdown in 2020.

As the name implies, each the plate is freshly sensitised and then exposed and developed while still wet, a window of roughly 10 minutes. It is tricky to master with an effective film speed of less than 1 ISO. It can produce some interesting and very analogue effects that Richard largely encourages in the process, to remind the viewer that the image is far from a perfect digital image.