New Wetplate Workshop at VillaRoquette

Wetplate collodion photography workshop at VillaRoquette

John Brewer using a 19th century camera at Villa Roquette

Our next workshop at Villa Roquette wetplate collodion workshop september 2025 will be on the weekend of September 26/27 2015.

It is run by John Brewer wetplate collodion workshops.

The cost of the two day workshop is £325, or £475 which includes two nights full board accommodation. All materials are included and there is a wide selection of cameras and equipment for your use. Payment can be made in UK Sterling or euro

The accommodation includes a double room so you can bring your partner, there is only a small extra charge of £25 if the second person wishes to join us for lunches and dinner on the two days, breakfasts are included already.

Students on the course can come earlier and stay later, as many days as they like. All darkroom and lab facilities are available and our cameras can be used. There would be a charge for extra materials and chemistry used

An interesting feature of this course is the availability of a fully equipped mobile darkroom designed for wetplate work.

Wetplate collodion workshop at villaroquette with mobile darkroom

Mobile Darkroom camera on roof

Students on the collodion course can get into the beautiful local countryside and make wet plate collodion work. We use both tin and glass plates.

Seeing the Light, Feeling the Darkness

My friend Barbara Heide is a photographer. She is a good photographer and shares her work through Internet sites, she has also made some books of her photographs about places and people she knows well.

Barbara is also one of a group of us who meet regularly to discuss things like poetry, images, philosophy and cricket (in truth we never discuss cricket, but it sounds less pretentious than the other stuff). We call it “The Odyssey” (allusions to Tennysons’ Ulysses), Carole calls it “The Nutters Club”

But, I have a problem. Barbara loves showing her work on the computer and, as she uses a digital camera she does a lot of exposures, so there are often up to 100 images to consider.

I believe it is very hard, even for a great photographer, to make one or two good images, images worth showing and sharing, in a month of work. Recently I was in Paris at the Cartier-Bresson exhibition. One of the greatest photographers ever with a creative career of over 60 years. But, the exhibition was too big – over 500 images far far far too many – and, in my opinion, many (most) were irrelevant and not worth putting on the wall for the exhibition. I am sure these were important if you want to study the life of the man, but I want to see and feel the images and, quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about the other stuff. It was the same at other exhibitions I saw this year, Brassai, Capa etc. It’s the same for all artists, luckily painting takes more time than pushing a shutter button, so usually an exhibition of paintings is less overloaded.

But with digital photography, I am often presented with scores and scores of snapshots all taken in a short time-frame. Many are simply the same shot from differing perspectives and perceptions, others are a multitude of landscapes, street scenes etc – each one perhaps has merit, but the visual overload of “yet another interesting door/window/wall/tree/field/hill/cloud, etc etc – completely defeats the purpose of sharing images. I am not saying they are all bad photographs or bad photography, they would be useful for the photographer to improve their perception – but please please please show me a few of the ones which tell me something – tell me a story – make me think as well as exciting me by the form and light I see and which was perceived by the photographer.

My other rant about digital photographs is that I know most, if not all, are electronically “enhanced” by both the cameras on-board computer and by other software by the photographer – so I know what I am seeing is something created and designed to be seen on a light emitting computer screen from a distance of 50 to 90 cm – not by reflected light on a wall from over a meter away – perhaps it is this that takes the “soul” away from digital work.

OK – all the technical stuff is (mostly) irrelevant if the image tells me something – if there is a story, if it creates in me a feeling – look at Capas’ “the falling soldier” often called the greatest photograph of the 20th century. Technically if is not good, but this is irrelevant, it is a very important and an extremely strong image and invokes deep feelings.

A photographer should (in my not so humble opinion) strive to show me something which makes me “see” and “feel” what they saw and felt at that moment of time – and then – only share with me the one single image which is relevant to that purpose. Less is more?

It was my son Jack’s birthday yesterday and he asked for a film camera. I gave him a simple Olympus OM1 outfit and one roll of film (Fomapan 100)- but – I only put enough film in the cassette for 10 exposures and suggested he looked for and took a picture of just one subject to share with me. He seems very keen to learn and I hope to carefully teach him to expose and develop to Zone System principles, so the sooner I can get him onto sheet film, the better (or collodion, but that is a different story). One image a month – a good goal.

Here is a picture from Barbaras’ “image poem” last week which did say something to me…

Collodion photography at Villa Roquette

Hands used for collodion photography – stains of silver nitrate

The purpose of this blog is to share our life at Villa Roquette and to tell you about our vacation accommodation there and the Photographic Workshops we are starting from Next January

My First, and Last Leica

A long time ago, when giants walked the earth, giants like Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, David Douglas Duncan (he is still here) Picasso and many others who influenced me, I bought my first Leica Camera. It was a M2, I also bought a M3 soon after and they became my “working” cameras for miniature format – the “feel” and the “silence” was beautiful.

Time trickled away – stuff got lost, broken and sold – I drifted into digital quicksand and my darkroom lights went out.

Now I am starting over again, but prices and values (not the same thing) have gone weird. I always worked with “large format”, which, in the past, for me was 4″x5″ and occasionally 10″x8″ – but now 5″X7″ is small for me and I am working mostly with 10″x12″ (inches) – but small cameras have a fascination, I don’t use them now to make a living, so can load a few frames and choose exposure and development more selectively.

But I could not justify the cost of a Leica M series – until last week.

I saw a MDa on ebay (two actually) at a very low price – made a crazy very low bid – and was lucky – it has a broken rewind button (so if anyone has parts please let me know, but this is no problem, it works fine.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The MDa is a lab camera – no rangefinder or viewfinder, basically it is the iconic M4 (one of the best cameras ever made). But as I only want a workhorse which is accurate and reliable, and as I only ever take four or five exposures which are usually thought through for a long time, I can use any viewfinder – then I thought about the Leica Visoflex and, low and behold, one appeared on ebay for under 50 euro – so I can (with a 5 euro adapter) put my selection of screw mounted lenses (Nikkor, Leica, Contax, Canon etc) – on my Leica Md body and have a SLR – I can also adapt this for a lot of the old 19th century lenses I have including some Peztvals.

So now I am back in the Leica fold (a little) – but I still love my Nikon SP.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I have expanded our home and business, VillaRoquette, to offer a wide range of photographic services and workshops – my laboratories and darkroom is used by teachers and experts to give courses and workshops to students who can stay in our accommodation.

The next two day courses are in January and February for Collodion wet-plate photography and run by John Brewer – students can stay with us for as long as they like and make full use of the darkroom and facilities – I also teach traditional black and white photography and darkroom practice.

Students or guests can use my equipment and work with a large selection of classic cameras and lenses covering over 150 years of photography (I have one 1861 lens in daily use)