Uncategorized

In an age where billions of images are created and forgotten every day, the physical photograph carries a different weight. A handcrafted plate made through chemistry, metal, light, and patience becomes something else entirely. It becomes an object that holds time. This is precisely the territory in which photographer Rachel Louise Brown works. Based in the UK, Brown has developed a remarkable contemporary portrait practice rooted in one of photography’s earliest techniques, tintype photography. Using Zebra Dry Plate Tintypes, she has been creating intimate, tactile portraits of artists, actors, and cultural figures, bringing a nineteenth century process into the heart of...

At first glance, black-and-white photography feels simple. Light enters a camera, a plate or film is exposed, and in the darkroom an image slowly appears. But beneath that simplicity lies one of the most refined chemical systems ever developed, a process in which light quite literally rearranges atoms of metal. Every traditional black-and-white photographic plate, sheet film, roll film, and darkroom paper begins with the same essential structure: microscopic crystals of silver halide suspended in gelatin. These crystals are compounds formed between silver and halogen elements, most commonly bromine, sometimes chlorine or iodine. The result is silver bromide, silver chloride, or...

Why Sharing Dry Plate Knowledge Matters Not long ago, I was invited by the Fotonomia Association to visit the University of Udine and give a class on making dry plates. It felt especially meaningful, because in the past few years I have been deeply immersed in building the business and rarely had the chance to travel and share dry plate photography through in person classes. Most of my energy went into private workshops in Slovenia, creating videos, writing blogs, developing user manuals, and refining the tools themselves. For me, dry plate photography is not just a technique. It is a responsibility to...