02 Jul
DARKROOM BUILD, DARKROOM CHEMISTRY, OTHER, Zebra Dry Plates

From Shipping Container to Darkroom Factory: The New Darkroom in Action

In the last blog, I wrapped up most of the darkroom essentials, furniture, sink, safelights, and more. With those foundations in place, it was finally time to move everything from my tiny shipping container darkroom into the spacious new Zebra Factory darkroom. It’s been a long time coming! The move wasn’t exactly light work. Chemicals, photographic paper, dark bags, stickers, labware, you name it, I made several trips back and forth. The old darkroom will now be repurposed into a raw plate storage and cleaning unit, which is much needed as our raw plate stock has grown massively over the last...

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19 Jun
AUTOCHROME, EQUIPMENT, OTHER, Zebra Dry Plates

A Journey into Slovenia’s Dry Plate Legacy & Filming a Dry Plate Documentary

This week, I had the unique opportunity to visit the Pelikan Glass Studio in Celje, Slovenia, a beautifully preserved photographic time capsule that offers a rare glimpse into the golden age of dry plate photography. Stepping into this historic space felt like traveling back more than a century, to a time when photography was not just a craft, but an art form practiced with precision, patience, and, most notably, glass. The Golden Age of Dry Plate Photography. The late 19th and early 20th centuries marked a turning point in photographic history. The invention of pre-coated glass dry plates revolutionized the field, replacing...

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