Recently I saw a post on The New Modern about a documentary of Sally Mann's process to photograph Civil War battlefields using a Civil War era photographic processes. Introduced in 1851, the wet-plate collodion process is a method of making photographic negatives on glass plates that have been coated with light-sensitive chemicals. The plate is then coated with a silver nitrate solution, loaded in a plate holder into the camera, and then exposed while still wet and sticky. The photographer has only about five minutes to make the picture before the solution dries.

This process is alluring and the results have a distinctive look that I find attractive. There is a growing number of practitioners  returning to these alternative photographic processes. As I spend more time researching my Civil War photography project I'm finding that many of these practitioners are also actively working on projects as well. I don't see myself switching to alternative processes at this time, but it certainly interesting and maybe something I could explore later.




For those interested in the history of photography I highly recommend Jeff Curto's History of Photography podcast. He records his lessons from his History of Photography class at the College of DuPage. I have listened to a couple of semesters worth of classes and have found them both interesting and valuable in my photographic research.

Here are some additional links to people that are actively exploring and using the wet plate process for their photography
Tintypes, Ambrotypes - Wet Plate Photography
Photography Contrastique - My Alternative Photographic Processes Diary
Civil War Photography - R.J. Szabo