Photograph ©Rashod Taylor / National Geographic, used with permission

I traveled to Georgia last year to help out Rashod Taylor with a wet-plate project he was working on for National Geographic. That story dropped today* (here’s the link) and I wanted to share some of it.

We spent the week all over the state photographing his family members who are part of the military in some way, making tintypes as a means of engaging the complexities of Black military service.

I helped out and shot some behind the scenes for NatGeo which should be on their stories soon.

*I’m writing this the day it posted, but am publishing this after the embargo time, just for the record.

Photograph ©Rashod Taylor / National Geographic, used with permission

Photograph ©Rashod Taylor / National Geographic, used with permission

Photograph ©Rashod Taylor / National Geographic, used with permission

Here are a few snaps from the week in Georgia.

Rashod and his cousin Valerie Lewis visit the grave or her grandfather, Sgt Lecky Taylor, at the Marietta National Cemetery.

Rashod organizing chemistry at his aunt and uncle’s home in Griffith, Georgia.

This is maybe 80% of the gear we needed to cram into this van. If you look closely, Rashod is in there waving.

Couldn’t resist talking this shot of my shadow at the Marietta National Cemetery.

This is a favorite moment in Griffith. We were photographing Rashod’s Uncle Ernest “Unc” Lewis and I ended up using an 8x10 dark slide as a flag gaffed to a c-stand arm. Truly a #shittyrigs moment.

Staff Sergeant Vanessa Lewis Williams shows me where “regulation” is for her hat, in preparation for a plate Rashod was about to make.

Rashod shows family the plate in the fixer.

Once again, check out the story here.

Rediscovered this old test plate of me from some portraits we made a while back.

Lots of us are going to miss Mardi Gras again this year but it’s cool to see them doing Yardi Gras in New Orleans and Mobile. Creative solution. As much as I don’t like crowd, this is one event during which I love to be immersed in the culture and traditions.
Here are some scenes from a couple of years ago.

More work for Balch & Bingham.

This is Jonathan Hoffman—lawyer, dad, and accomplished music composer. He’s had his work selected multiple times from nationwide competitions held by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.

Always one to be working, he was legitimately composing while we were shooting.

A while back I photographed some folks at Balch & Bingham as part of a recruitment campaign and I just noticed they’ve started using the images.

This is Irving Jones. Attorney, golfer, road trip enthusiast, and former counterintelligence agent.

Oh, and super nice guy.

William, December 2020

I photographed my buddy Chef John Hall a while back and I gotta say, I love this dude. He makes killer food and is one of the nicest guy’s meet.

After working in a bunch of the top restaurants in New York (and starting to sling pizza out of his apartment) he came back to Birmingham and started my favorite pizza joint in town, Post Office Pies.

Speaking of his time in New York, he was recently on David Chang’s Podcast. Interesting listen for some in-industry conversations.

Here’s a recent portrait for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance of northern Alabama farmer Larkin Martin of Martin Farms up in Courtland, Ala., where they grow corn, soy, cotton, and wheat.

Larkin was a lovely host and even let us take a ride on a cotton combine which was way cooler than I expected it to be.

Dr. Orr brought the good stuff on a recent shoot for a orthopedic center.

I spent last week on assignment with Rashod Taylor in rural Georgia for National Geographic. Rashod was working on his “My America” wet plate series and I was along for support. I took a couple of plates along the way including this portrait of Rashod. Follow along with his work here.

We took a moment to see my dad and his wife a while back—first time since about a year ago.

One of our activities was to take a ride on a pontoon boat and I understand a bit more the appeal of such an outing. The more time I spend at the lake overall the more I get people embracing life on the water, but I bet part of the appeal to me is that we’ve been going during off-peak times when there are less people around. Quiet lake time seems optimal for me.

In today’s Washington Post there is a story about Mia Owens’ new fellowship at the White House Historical Association, where she will research the history of slavery in the White House. The fellowship was created in partnership with American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center as a means of addressing racism and inequity in America using history as an educational tool. Thanks to Mark Miller for the assignment.

Over the last year I’ve been supported by the Alabama State Council for the Arts’ inaugural Gay Burke Memorial Fellowship in Photographic Arts.

The fellowship has allowed, in part, me and Jared Ragland to continue working on our project, Where You Come From Is Gone, which explores the representation of memory and absence through a series of wet-plate collodion tintype photographs documenting sites of Native American habitation and removal across the American South.

I’ve also been designing and building an ultra large format 20x20” field camera, and this blog post will serve as the holding ground for build updates.

I’ve researched a camera build of this scale for years, off and on, and have drawn my initial plan in SketchUp, with the goal of having my friends at Alabama Sawyer cut out the parts on their CNC, for the prototype at least. The prototype is made of plywood but the final build will be made of some cherry that’s been saved by my dad from his dad.

Here’s an overview of the camera as animated in SketchUp. It’s a rough sketch, but you get the point.

After the design was completed, I set out to make the ground glass. Several hours of hand-grinding with 5 micron grit (3300 grit sandpaper equivalent) turned into my first homemade proper ground glass. The best I’ve done before this is sandpaper on plexiglass, so this is a big upgrade.

Soon the prototype build should be done and we can continue our wet plate work at a much larger scale.

Here are some progress photos. I’ll update as things progress.

Nearly finished

Done and in the ground glass frame

First pieces, freshly cut at Alabama Sawyer

Lens dry fit. Using a Wollensak Verito Soft Focus ƒ4 18” lens that’s in really terrible shape. But it doesn’t matter too much since this will be used with wet plate work, which is SUPER slow.

Dry fit for dark slide.

Glue up is still in process. Hoping to have a rough build in a couple of weeks. I’ve got the bellows (ordered from CustomBellows.co.uk, because I’d still be fretting over the materials, I’m confident) ready for glue up onto their small frame for mounting in the standards. That’s gonna be a trip.

Chamfering countersinks for the front standard screws

Rough-in of front standard

More to come as this project continues.

Finally, years later, I have made myself continue this project. I was delayed for a long time by either space constraints, work or life schedule, or ennui. I have actually mounted the front standard for real, and am attempting to get this thing finished up. I have maybe a month of usage out of the garage and I’m hoping to get things thing together in that time and start shooting in earnest as soon as possible.

Rough in for the front standard mount / guide.

Imperfectly chamfered U channel affixed to internal (moving) rail. The wood bit on the right will slide forward and back for the front standard movement. Fine focus will be achieved with a worm gear (designed for a 3D printer).

Just when I started rolling on the camera again two things happened. I ran out of room again, and I saw the video below.

Photographer Richard Pence built an 11x14 field camera using lots of off-the-shelf parts, the most obvious and brilliant of them being Arca Swiss rails and mounts.

I am flabbergasted by its simplicity and compact design. The camera is really, really cool. And I’m pissed I didn’t think about my build with easy-to-buy stuff on my mind. I found cameras I thought looked nice and actually buildable for someone with limited woodworking skills. So it’s all custom, handmade parts.

My point is, now, thanks to Richard, I am at a crossroads. Do I fall into the sunk cost fallacy and complete the build I’ve started, or do I abandon the pieces I don’t need and attempt to build a 20x20 version of something similar to this new design.

I’ve got some pondering to do.

I had the great privilege to photograph an image library for the newly opened restaurant, Helen. I’ve long been a fan of Rob McDaniel’s food—from his time at SpringHouse or cooking with Jones Valley Teaching Farm—and I’m excited that this new venture, named for Rob’s grandmother, has come to Birmingham. Everything I’ve gotten to taste has been wonderful and I am proud and impressed with them pushing through to open safely during a global pandemic. Welcome to town, you all!

This year, I’ve been working on a new camera build as part of the Alabama State Council for the Arts’ inaugural Gay Burke Memorial Fellowship in Photographic Arts. I’m sure the build will have its own blog post once the camera is done, but in the meantime I’ve been thinking a lot about wet plate and I’m getting excited to shoot more soon.

This is a portrait of photographer Jerimiah Smith, taken on New Year’s Eve 2018. Jerimiah is also an avid analogue photo nerd like me and you can find his work here and here.

I’ve gotten to work with the folks over at Sloss Metal Arts off and on for a few years and we got together to make some portraits of the crew this past week. Marshall is the Director of Metal Arts and this shot of him in the old Blower Room is one of my favorites from the day. The blower room is massive and was used to force air into two equally massive foundry furnaces back when Sloss was in full swing.

William, my father in law, photographed June, 2020.

William, my father in law, photographed in April of 2020.

This weekend we checked in on our bees and we actually got to spend some time with Jill. We’ve all been self quarantining for what feels like forever, but we still made every effort to stay a safe distance from each other.

We learned, in this visit, that our walk-away split seems to have taken (we saw eggs and larvae, which means there is a queen) and that one of our hives that had over-wintered had way too much space and is weak. We’re working on helping them out.

My friends over at Nourish Foods, a national direct-to-customer meal service based here in Birmingham, have been putting together some amazing boxes lately. A recent offering was called the Southern Charcuterie Box and it included not only our honey, but fabulous products from several of our friends.

The cheese board included in the box was made by Cliff at Alabama Sawyer and I work so closely to (and with) them, I couldn’t help but document the process. Cliff was able to hand make ~60 of these boards in just a coupe of days, and with a small on his face, too.