Living so close to NYC has many advantages, taking my kids to the Central & Bronx Zoo’s, hanging out with friends, amazing concerts, fantastic museums, and The Penumbra Foundation/Center for Alternative Photography. I have been able to take some pretty special workshops there, learned new photography processes, and have meet some incredible people, including Lisa Elmaleh. Lisa is awesome, plain and simple. She is a crazy talented photographer, seriously check out her work!, and one of the best teachers I’ve had. I took her Intro to Wet Plate last year, and was hooked. The process is so in depth and unique, everything must be done within mins of sensitizing your plate, and every image is one of a kind. When CAP offered the opportunity to shoot wet plate for a weekend with Lisa is lovely Paw Paw, WV, I jumped and the chance. It was made even better by the fact that it was for women only and the other two students were friends from the first wet plate workshop I took with Lisa, Alicia & Erica. Lisa had an assistant, Ashley, who was a wonderful model and fire goddess extraordinaire.
The wet plate collodion process was invented by Frederick Scott Archer and introduced in the 1850s. You pour collodion onto glass to make an ambrotype, or tin to create a tintype. You then place your plate into a sodium nitrate bath in order to make it light sensitive. Then it’s ready to be exposed in the camera and developed. All of this is done while the plate is still wet, hence the name wet plate.
We photographed around the cabin and used Lisa’s own darkroom in the back of her truck, which is somehow different but similar to shooting in a studio. The three of us got into a groove of coating plates, shooting and developing. I’ve struggled in the past with my exposures and developing, but I think I got the hang of it on this trip. Lisa is helpful, but won’t hold your hand the whole time. You need to try on your own in order to make mistakes and learn from them in order to get better and improve. I am the queen of Sally Mann’ing a plate, a.k.a creating a plate full of imperfections. Which I personally love, but sometimes you want that perfect plate. 🙂
Between Lisa opening her home to us, her warm and welcoming neighbors, and shooting all day for two days, the weekend did not disappoint. There is no cell service and limited wifi and re-connecting with nature became a huge part of the weekend as well for me. I find I spend so much time on the internet and my phone, checking my email, getting sucked into the vortex that is Facebook, updating my website, etc. I loved just being.
As women, I find we over prepare a lot of the time. As was the case when it came to food for the weekend. We all brought so much, we ate like queens! Meals & chores were divvied up amongst the five of us. I enjoyed the simplicity of washing dishes with creek water, or in the creek itself sometimes, cooking in as few pans as possible and being more conscience about my use of consumables.
Lisa, the hostess with the mostest, took us to the Paw Paw Tunnel, a 3,118-foot long canal through the mountain. It’s beautiful and eerie at the same time. When you walk through, you can hardly see ahead of you and the opening on the other side is the size a pin.
Lisa is hosting another women only wet plate weekend run by CAP in August. I highly suggest you sign up for it here! It doesn’t matter if you are new to the wet plate process or it is old hat, you will learn so much and have an amazing time.
