Portrait nominee

This are portraits made with the Wet Plate Collodion process from 1851, on a large format vintage camera from the 1970's. An image made with liquid silver and light.

The process (as described below) is a very purposeful method, it takes 20 minutes to make one image, and each image is hand crafted in my mobile caravan darkroom. The slow nature of the process requires concentration and discipline from the subject (not something that children have in abundance!), so you often only get one shot to get it right.

The process sees light differently to other photographic processes, blue eyes become almost ghostly light, in the time it takes to make a single portrait, the sitter drops all false emotion and people often say 'they see the soul in the image'.

Born and raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, I moved out to the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand in 2010 to work as a medical doctor, and now live and work in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

My passionate addiction to photography led me to teach myself how to make images, starting ten years ago with digital image manipulation and design, then onto digital photography subsequently teaching myself black and white film photography and print making. More recently, I have found my passionate niche by adopting the wet plate collodion process and it is here where I find comfort, sitting on the fringes of modern photography, basking in the hazy fog of volatile chemicals, wood shavings and excitement at the prospect of photographic DIY.

Far from re-enacting the days of old, I use collodion to produce contemporary images with contemporary methods. When not at work as a GP, or in my lab experimenting with chemistry, I can be found out and about in my mobile darkroom caravan.

As an experienced collodion photographer, I teach the process as well as offering commissions.