The Rustic Stomp Festival 2025

Last weekend, Andy (Moo Pa) and I were invited along to the Rustic Stomp festival, near Wareham, to provide a popup tintype studio.

Rustic Stomp is a relatively small but growing festival with a Western/Americana theme. There were over 60 International acts across 4 stages, set in a natural bowl in the landscape.

A perfect opportunity for tintypes.

We didn’t know what to expect so we took the usual wet plate collodion kit plus the kitchen sink. Or so we thought.

We hadn’t accounted for the roasting heat over the next three days.

We had been allocated a great spot right next to the bar, very handy. It sadly offered no shade until 8PM. Actually there was very little shade to be had from the intense sunshine.

Moo had brought along his new double pop up darkroom, which worked a treat apart from it being black and therefore like an oven inside by 10 am each day. We draped some silver tarps over the top to try and control the heat with only limited effect.

We also had to use the pop up gazebo as some shade for sitters away from blazing sunshine.

For the first time in 15 years of shooting wet plate collodion, the chemistry proved far too hot and we had to resort to the ice from the remains of our iced coffee to keep some chems cool. And used sugar, alcohol and deionised water in the developer to give us some level of control. It was pretty uncomfortable in that darkroom and quite a challenge.

Here are some of our better plates. They’ve been cleaned up a little in the wash and cropped a little. We need to get a better digitisation set up, for capturing our results before handing over to the customer.

Russ (above) kindly loaned us a rotary fan, with power from the bar, it just about made the darkroom bearable for short periods of time. Thank you Russ. He also helped spread the word about what we were up to amongst the festival goers.

Hawkeye (the main man and organiser) paid for a lot of the crew to get their plates made. There were some great faces that were definitely made for tintypes.

If weather conditions continue to be this erratic, we will have to look at warm weather developer as default chemistry, with further chilled intervention of the silver bath solution.

It also took us by surprise to how many people turned up at the very last moment to try and have a plate made, having been there for 3 days… “oh I should have come yesterday”… yes maybe you should, sorry.

We’ll advertise that next time as we must have turned away half a dozen disappointed visitors, even after extending our stay for a few hours. But we really had to break the studio down and pack up, especially as I had a good 6 hour drive home. Worked it out that it was a 500 mile round trip.

Sorry to disappoint of you did stop by at that time. Come see us earlier next year if we are invited back.

We had a great time. Thanks Hawkeye and team, and to Martin Wattinger for suggesting us.

Now hoping for a few days cooler weather to recover.