“Tintypes can last hundreds of years. My portraits become heirlooms that will be passed down for generations to come. How cool is that?”
A: Unique and compelling. The portraits are created using a wet plate collodion process called Tintype photography. It was invented in England by Frederick Scott Archer in the 1850s. Many images from the Civil War were Tintypes.
As little as 20 years ago, there were just a handful of people in the entire world doing this. Because it had gone by the wayside, there were only books and notes from the late 1800s that described the process and how to do it. The chemicals used are very toxic and dangerous if handled improperly and this, I believe, is what keeps a lot of people away from learning. There are now workshops available, and wet plate collodion businesses that sell the chemicals and supplies. Tintype photographer Tim Brow styles flowers around Corey Hubbard’s face as she poses while getting her photograph taken in his studio in Salido on March 20, 2023. Brown says that the experience of getting a tintype photograph is fun and unique. “It’s rare that people don’t leave with a new appreciation of the process,” he says. Clients can choose from a collection of hats or clothes and other objects in his studio to add interesting elements to the photograph. A: Before plastic and film, photographers would prepare a plate in the darkroom using chemicals to make the plate a light-sensitive negative. The plate is then inserted into a lightproof holder, placed in the camera for exposure, then developed in the darkroom. This process involves coating a piece of tin with liquid silver and other chemicals, to create a light-sensitive negative. The negative is then exposed using my vintage cameras and lenses that I have collected over the years. Once exposed, the negative is developed using the historic chemical process to create stunning, one-of-a-kind portraits. The process takes about 10 minutes. If the plate dries before it is developed, it will not turn out. So all tintypes must be created, exposed and developed fast before the plate dries. After the plate is washed and dried, it is varnished to protect the plate from tarnishing and/or damaging the silver. The end result is a photograph made of silver on tin that will last hundreds of years. In taking the images, the process can be cumbersome. The field cameras are large and clunky. There is nothing automated about the cameras, they are 100% manual. Focusing is difficult and composition takes time. Exposures are long. Typically I’m exposing my plates somewhere between two and eight seconds. Any movement with the camera or the subject and everything will be blurry. This process reacts to light much differently than modern photography. It’s most sensitive to ultraviolet light. Among other things, that means that anything on the cool or blue spectrum goes lighter and anything in the warm or red spectrum goes darker. This can really affect the tones in the image. Things can easily go wrong. Temperature, humidity and contamination all play a role in maintaining your chemicals, and sometimes issues come out of nowhere and take a while to figure out. Tintype photographer Tim Brown processes the tintype photograph of Corey Hubbard in his darkroom in Salida on March 20, 2023. Any step from beginning to end when using the sometimes toxic chemicals can ruin an image. The last step of the tintype process is using a fixer. Historically, tintype photographers used potassium cyanide as a fixer, but today some prefer to use sodium thiosulfate, which is less toxic. Brown uses a mixture with diluted cyanide which helps to develop the image. A: I use my studio almost like a theater space. Clients have a selection of items from hats, clothes and other things they can dress in to make the photos more interesting, fun or dramatic. Oftentimes they bring their own items to wear. This helps clients create personalities for their images. I have done pop-ups in a field where clients want on-location images. Tintype photographer Tim Brown and client Corey Hubbard look at the processed photo of Hubbard in Brown’s darkroom in Salida on March 20, 2023. A: I’ve been a self-taught professional photographer for 41 years. Before wet plate collodion, I specialized in adventure travel photography for the commercial and editorial markets. My interest in photography was greatly influenced by my father, who was an avid amateur photographer. I received my first camera when I was 12, by 16 I had a darkroom in my basement and by 21 I left home to pursue adventure photography in Colorado.A: When digital photography arrived, so did approximately 22 million new “pro” photographers. Competition is fierce and everyone’s looking to make a buck. All of this really affected my business as an adventure travel photographer. One by one, I lost a lot of my longtime clients as they could find their photography for much cheaper, or even free. Before digital photography, I did a lot of darkroom work with film. I missed the handmade aspect of photography. It makes each image unique and one of a kind. In 2014, after opening a studio and gallery in downtown Salida, I began building a darkroom and started focusing on wet plate collodion and film photography. After five years of perfecting the tintype process, and COVID, I sold my downtown gallery and moved my studio to my home just outside Salida to pursue tintype photography in a natural-light studio that I built on-site. A tintype photo of Corey Hubbard dries on a rack with other tintype photographs by photographer Tim Brown in his darkroom in Salida on March 20, 2023. , Instagram , Facebook or at my studio. Or the occasional show at an art gallery.Q: Do you have a favorite art piece? How about one that isn’t yours?Q: What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to be an artist? A: Ha ha, my father told me to get into business and sales. He questioned what I was doing in a small, desolate mountain town taking pictures and running around in the wilderness.A: The occasional feeling of being underpaid for what I do. The competition, where so many photographers copy other photographers’ styles and techniques, versus creating that on their own. Tintype can easily be “mimicked” on the computer or through filters on phones. True tintypes can’t be made on computers. Part of the beauty of the image is the very process that it takes to make it and the fact that there is only one image when done.Q: What advice would you offer to beginning artists? A: Be passionate about what you do. Be playful with your art; it doesn’t always have to be about making money.A: A tintype project documenting six men and women as they struggle through the hardships of divorce and being single again. I hope for an October opening in Salida.
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