All Dallas Center for Photography classes and workshops are held at 4756 Algiers Street, Dallas 75207. Register online at www.dallascenterforphotography.org.
Introduction to Wet Plate Photography with Lisa Elmaleh
Saturday, December 7 – Sunday, December 9
This intensive course will dive into wet plate collodion, which was the leading process of photography in the 1850s and ’60s. It was used to document the Civil War and to create the portraits of Abraham Lincoln. The process is most commonly known in its three forms—tintypes (positives on tin), ambrotypes (positives on glass), and glass negatives (negatives on glass).
The basics of the collodion process will be covered and topics will include:
- Hand coating collodion plates: preparing the plate, cleaning glass, pouring collodion
- Creating wet collodion images: exposing, developing, fixing and varnishing
- Safely mixing the chemistry
- Building a darkroom and modifying cameras for the process
- Printing pre-existing imagery using an enlarger onto wet collodion plates
- Experimentation will be strongly encouraged.
