Wet plate collodion

These images have been created using the mid-1850s wet plate collodion process – often also referred to as a ‘tintype’.

To create an image, a metal plate is hand-coated with liquid collodion and submerged in silver nitrate to create a light sensitive plate. The plate is loaded into a 8×10 large format field camera to create a single exposure.

The image must be immediately developed while the plate is still wet – hence the name ‘wet plate’. Each shot takes around 15 minutes to create and produces a one off, unique image.