Photographer Jenny Sampson shot this, along with portraits of other skateboarders last week at the Bolinas skatepark, using an 8″ by 10″ view camera and the tintype process — a 19th century procedure called wet plate collodion (invented in 1851).
I had to hold perfectly still for 20 seconds, during which time the shutter was open for 3-5 seconds. She then developed the plate in a portable darkroom she set up on site.
I’ve always felt that people in those photos from 100 years ago looked piercingly realistic, due to the shutter being open for a relatively long time, and getting more of the essence of its subjects.
More on Jenny and her books and photos (many of skaters) at www.jennysampson.com
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About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
Very cool. no wonder folks in those old photos generally looked SO SERIOUS!
that’s a fair while to stand perfectly still.
Looks good, Lloyd!