Kirsteen Aubrey – Glass Artist

Today Kirsteen came into the studio to see the wetplate process and how it may work in a collaboration she has with Prof. David Crow.

It was a lovely sunny day and plenty of UV bouncing into the studio through our windows. After recent exposures of up to 40 seconds with Gopal it was reassuring to see we were getting 5-10 seconds for a change.

Looking at the plates more closely after scanning, any blurred areas of Kirsteens face are down to me and not any movement on her part as I first thought.
Shooting wide open to make the most of the light has its downsides and that limited depth of field at f4 can be a right plate killer.
Also these older lenses have great detail fall off at the edges of the image circle, you think your in focus, you are in focus, its just the glass is a little soft when it gets to the edges…will keep an eye on that in future.

Started with two clear glass quarter plate ambrotypes…(scans of varnished plates)

Then a quarter plate tintype. What I’ve noticed on some tins are the vertical lines of the substrate itself, its more evident on some plates than others, it may well be part of their manufacturing process. I don’t like it whatever it is.

A whole plate tintype. I really liked this one.

Another whole plate tintype. Kirsteen was interested in several aspects of wetplate but also with the long exposures the possibility to add movement/double exposure on the plate.

In all a creative and useful session. We have another booked in November where we’ll be hopefully looking further at her collaboration with David Crow.