I spent the day with Ray Bidegain at his studio in Portland. It was an intensely fabulous day of wet plate making! This is a process where the collodion emulsion is poured onto a surface (in this case black aluminum - though we did use some glass plates). The emulsion is then immersed in a silver nitrate solution - in the darkroom. The silver nitrate adheres to the collodion emulsion and a photographic wet plate is created! The plate is loaded into the camera and exposed while wet. It is immediately developed and washed.

The exposures are somewhat long and I absolutely love the affect! I plan to work mostly with portraiture in the future. Drop me an email if you're interested in becoming a subject!