Rachel & Bennett
I was honored to make two really lovely tintypes of Rachel and her beautiful baby, Bennett. This particular project has been plagued by the wide variety of challenges that the wet plate collodion process presents. In the winter, the collodion wasn't setting properly. Then, on a sunny Spring day, the developer was too "hot" and overdeveloping the images.And then, of course, we were up against the inherent challenges of photographing a wiggly little baby with a photographic process that demands long exposures and complete stillness. Needless to say, it was all quite a challenge. I could see the image that I wanted in my head, but the plates just were not working out as I envisioned. I owe many thanks to Rachel-- her calm demeanor and patience kept me positive and willing to keep working through all the challenges, in pursuit of making a nice tintype plate of that image in my head. We finally got two really beautiful plates and I'm sort of thinking that this might turn out to be the beginning of a lovely little series of mothers...
Rachel & Bennett #3