Thank you to everyone who came and made yet another enjoyable weekend at Lacock Abbey.
Thank you to Roger Watson and the NT Staff for allowing us to visit again. Hopefully see you all again next year.
I’m not going to get chance to digitise my plates properly for a week or so so here some improvised flatbed scans of some of the plates.
I might have seemed a little fixated with the “Pond” at Lacock Abbey this year but it was an area I had already decided I wanted to shoot with an idea in mind for when I eventually get hold of an etching press. I had a certain image I wanted to capture.
It was a bit of a weird weekend wet plate wise. It seemed half the group were shooting trouble free and the other half struggling with hotspots and fogging. Myself included. It was very frustrating. I had wanted to concentrate on negatives but found myself taking it right back to basics spending most of the Saturday problem solving. Sunday was much better but I was still getting some fogging on one end of the plate, I’ll have to check the camera for a light leak.
I’d only taken the sliding box camera which has an f4 ish only lens, and at one point in the day it would have been 1/16th of a second for the exposure. Try doing that with a lens cap as a shutter!
I had improvised a washer stop from my Darlot Cone lens to use as a front element stop but it was still only two stops difference at f8.
So enough excuses…. some of the plates. All half plate and a mix of glass and tin.
Thankfully I was after a circular image for printing, and one of the plates suit it just right. Some of you have seen a circular print I made last year and I wanted to follow that with some different subject matter.
Now, I just need to get a hold of an etching press. I’ve had a little clear out of some bits and pieces from the studio and have raised some funds via Ebay, so I can look at purchasing pretty soon.
Next up is the Llanthony Priory Wet Plate Camping weekend in August but if you cant wait that long then Simon Harbord is arranging a Scottish event in July. Unfortunately I’ll be sunning myself in Portugal for a couple of weeks.