Developed in 1871, the historic dry plate process is an important mode of photographic expression that succeeded wet plate collodion, and preceded roll film as we know it. Besides being a fantastic historical study, it has acquired a cachet in contemporary photo-based work.

Students will explore this historic monochrome photographic process in-depth, learning how to prepare the chemistry and pour it onto their glass plates before shooting, how to then load the prepared glass (or ‘plates’) into a large format camera, expose, and develop.

Plate preparation, exposure, format options, processing choices, and demonstration of creating contact prints will all be covered in these classroom sessions with hands-on work in the darkroom. Students will create their own compositions in the studio and work with these images to develop the full expressive potential of their dry plate negatives.