A still life session with Kirsteen Aubrey

On Friday I had a wetplate session with Kirsteen Aubrey, unfortunately David Crow couldn’t make it, so we shot some plates of objects Kirsteen was interested in making some images of, with view of making digital transfers for her glass artwork.

With winter setting in, the lighting in the studio is becoming a little more hit and miss. At the start we were in the 10 seconds range but within a couple of hours we were up to 90 seconds with the added complication of the sun making an appearance now and again….Got to love wet plate exposures, all over the place.

Kirsteen seemed very happy with the majority of the plates, all 1/4 plate clear glass, I just need to varnish them and then see what she thinks of them. Not sure yet how she sees this work progressing but thats something I think we’ll be addressing in the near future. I’ll see if I can get her to write down a little of her thoughts for the blog.

KirsteenChairs

We started with one of the studio chairs. First plate was with an epidiascope lens thats really really soft, then onto an f4 brass barrel lens.

KirsteenType01

These are plates of Kirsteens Grandfathers typewriter. What really threw me when I was drying the plates of the type-bars, I thought I was handling them on the wrong side but I hadn’t clicked that the type was already reversed and therefore when shown in reverse in wet plate it would actually be the right way around…doh.

KirsteenType02

KirsteenType

Then we moved on to some old pocket watches. I’ve wet plated some watch faces in the past that came out black so was a little concerned how these would come out. The first one was fine but when we moved on to the second both plates were poorly exposed and focussed, maybe the ether was getting to me…

KirsteenWatches

All in all was a great little session, especially with the exposures changing so frequently.