We are delighted to inform you that IBB’s own, Omar Kuwas, is going to be attending an Ambrotypes workshop in Rochester, New York. Ambrotype is a historical photography technique very popular in the second half of the 19th century.

Omar has been experimenting and specialising in analog photography methods for quite some time now and is very excited to be taking part in this three-day workshop. The workshop will be provided by Mark Osterman, the Photographic Process Historian at the George Eastman House (also known as the Kodak Museum).
In this intense workshop Omar and the other participants will dive into the depths of the wet plate collodion process and learn how to not only take wet plate images, but also how to coat and develop said plates.

The collodion process is a very involved photographic technique where the photographer can literally work from complete scratch. If they desire they can do the whole process from base chemicals up to the finished photograph. The wet plate collodion process bears that name because you literally have to shoot the image while the plate is still wet from the sensitising chemicals. But all the hard work pays off in the end with an end result that is tangible –as the photograph is made on a plate of glass–, literally unique, and visually captivating, as the look of ambrotypes are very different from more modern analog methods.

With this technique added to the wide experience of Omar, the IBB darkroom will add another technique to the diverse possibilities the darkroom can offer not only to the IBB students but the general public as well.
This opportunity was made possible by the IBB, Mondriaan Fonds, Stichting DOEN and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Caribisch Gebied. For more information on the workshop, instructor and photographic process, here are some handy links:
http://eastmanhouse.org/events/detail.php?title=photo-workshop18_2014
http://www.eastmanhouse.org/
http://www.collodion.org/bio.html
https://www.facebook.com/mark.osterman.3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process
http://www.pbccaribbean.com/

(featured image property of the George Eastman House)