A busy November

Its been about six weeks since I posted, shocking!  There has a lot been going on in November, including a visit to the studio of Mark Vose in Halifax.  As well as having an impressive studio space and being a talented photographer, he also builds great plate cameras.

John Brewer also opened a new exhibition, 'The Cabinet of Curiosities’.  I went to the opening of this with Eleanor Kalaher who has just taken her first steps into the land of wet plate.  Not only did he exhibit his latest plates, on trophy plate, but also some of the props and subjects.

I bought a box full of broken wooden cameras off ebay.  When it came there was a whole plate and two half plate cameras, assorted plate holders, two roller blind shutters and five lenses.  It took me less than a day to fix the whole plate and I have been using it ever since.  The 10x12 is packed away and I have a new favorite format.  I have just about finished one of the half plates, the other will be more of a project.  The purchase was worth it for the lenses alone.  I have cleaned them up and am using three.  I may see if Mina wants one of the others for her half plate, or maybe Eleanor will get bitten by the collodion bug.

I have had three students over to work with me and introduced them to wet plate.  I have had a huge problem with comets, especially when there were three of us working together.  It turned out to be plaster dust still coming up from the floorboards.  Hardly surprising after all the sanding that’s gone on, but I thought after killing two vacuum cleaners and several mops I would have got rid of it by now.  To cure it I have sealed the floor, and the problem seems to have gone away.

I managed to get a four tube proofing light and have hung it from the ceiling above my desk and printer.  I should have listened to the advice of not to hang it on my own!  I got one end hung then got stuck with the other.  I had visions of me standing there shouting for help.  I managed it in the end.

I finally got around to making the curtains so the rails were moved back and I now have curtains that fit the windows.  This means that the plasma screen is usable for slide shows, digital presentations (and watching Breaking Bad!).

All of the spot lights are up and working so I have hung an edited version of the Forest Nation exhibition from May.

I dragged an old filing cabinet up the stairs – literally at times – so this has gone where the table I used for cleaning plates was.  The table has now been painted and is next to the plan chest, which is where I cut the glass.

The wet darkroom is tidied and homes found for every thing.  I have extended the bench in the dry darkroom so that it is full length.  I bought a DeVere 504 bench top chassis to repair my 507 drop table.  In the end I just swapped the carriages and now have a 507 bench enlarger.  This sits next to a 5x7 Chromega and a 35mm DeVere.  There are two 5x4 Chromegas in bits under the bench along with the drop table DeVere chassis.  Been a busy few weeks.

I had a visit last weekend from the very talented Eleanor Kahaler, photographer, artist, musician and one of the funniest people I know.  She as returned to shooting on film so came to try out the darkroom, I had forgotten how much I love working under red light.