Ambrotypes are wet plate collodion images made on a glass plate. Traditional sizes for wet plates are 4×5, 5×7 and 8×10 but for this plate I used 5×10 inches. The 5×10 is a 2:1 view and is used very often for cinema films. The 2:1 ratio gives a great view of James Island and is very fitting for the scene.

This plate was a bit of an experiment – very successful but still an experiment. I drilled the glass after making the image and varnishing the plate. Very risky actually because it is very easy to crack glass while drilling and that would ruin all of the work that went into it. So why not drill the plate before photography? Then a crack would only ruin the glass and waste all my time and work. The problem is that the collodion is poured onto the plate and I had no way to keep it from running out the holes! That would be such a mess. In the end, post drilling worked very well and I will be doing more of these plates in the future.

The mounting for the Ambrotype is another experiment. I had to cut down a few pine trees last year and kept some stump sections for art projects. I cut the wood into thin slabs, dried it and then planed them down to a good thickness for frames. I used a torch to burn the wood to a pleasing color – the Shou Sigi Ban method. I then added a few layers of matte shellac to seal the wood. The glass was then float mounted on the wood to give a positive image with an almost three dimensional quality.

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