I went to be photographed by Guy Bellingham at his studio in Bristol. Guy is a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS), a wet plate collodion specialist, and one of a handful of people in the world doing this process at a genuinely world-class level. He has won at the International Portrait Photographer of the Year Awards (2022), the British Photography Awards (2021), and most recently scooped several accolades at the Portrait Masters 2023.
His work is extraordinary. I had been doing some dry plate tintypes through Zebra Dry Plates recently and was aware that I had never actually seen or held a proper wet plate collodion image in my hand. So I decided to fix that, and the best way I could think of was to pay one of the best practitioners in the world to take my portrait.
This piece is partly about that experience: what it is like to sit for a wet plate portrait, what the process actually involves, and what the resulting plates look like when you hold them. It is also a bit about Guy himself, who is a fascinating man and a generous teacher. And it is about why, despite seeing the appeal up close, I am not buying a wet plate kit myself.
If you have followed my dry plate tintype experiments, this is the related-but-different process worth understanding.
What wet plate collodion actually is
Wet plate collodion is a photographic process invented in 1851. It predates almost everything you would recognise as modern photography. The image is formed on a plate (glass or aluminium) coated with a chemical mixture called collodion, sensitised with silver nitrate, exposed in the camera while still wet, and developed and fixed within a 10-15 minute window before the plate dries.
The “wet” in wet plate is genuinely literal. The entire chemical process has to happen while the plate is physically still wet from the silver nitrate bath. If you let it dry, the process fails. This means everything from coating to exposure to development happens in a window of about ten minutes per plate.
Compared to my own dry plate tintype work with Zebra’s pre-prepared plates, the difference is enormous. Dry plates come ready-coated, are shelf-stable, and can be processed at leisure. Wet plates are made fresh on the spot, every time, for every shot, and processed immediately.
The advantages of wet plate are real: a depth and luminosity to the finished plate that nothing else produces, an authentic Victorian-era character, and a connection to the historical roots of the medium. The disadvantages are equally real: the process is laborious, ether-based chemistry is hard to source and store, and the entire workflow demands a properly equipped studio.
Guy’s kit
Worth describing because it is a museum piece in itself.
The camera: a Toyo 8x10 monorail, modern, but on a Victorian-era brass camera stand with a hand crank for height adjustment and tilt. The stand alone took Guy a long time to source.
The main lens: a Voigtländer Heliar 360mm f4.5 from 1927, uncoated (which is important, because uncoated glass passes more UV, which is exactly what the orthochromatic wet plate process responds to).
The collection of other lenses I got to see:
- Voigtländer Heliar 450mm f4.5 Petzval from 1850 (three years older than the wet plate process itself, originally made for daguerreotypes)
- Hugo Meyer Petzval 360mm f3 from approximately 1907, used wide open for several of Guy’s famous portraits
- Taylor Hobson Cooke Knuckler with adjustable spherical aberration via a rotating barrel mechanism with knuckle-duster handles
- Verito, the soft-focus lens famous for Hollywood star portraits in the 1920s
Each of these lenses is itself a remarkable object. The 450mm Petzval from 1850 weighs more than most modern cameras. The Cooke Knuckler is 4.5kg of brass. The collection cost more than most studios.
Strobe: 3,200 watt-seconds of strobe power, because the wet plate process has an ISO of roughly 1.5 (with variations depending on how fresh the collodion is), which is too slow for hand-holdable natural light exposures.
![PLACEHOLDER: Guy’s studio setup, showing the Toyo 8x10 on the Victorian brass stand with the 450mm Petzval lens]
Sitting for the first plate
Wet plate has specific requirements for sitters that took some preparation. Guy had asked me to avoid:
- Black: very narrow depth of field means texture matters; black hides it
- White: collodion’s dynamic range is narrower than modern processes, so highlights blow out quickly
- Light blue: collodion is orthochromatic, meaning it responds only to blue and UV. Light blue clothing renders nearly white. Blue eyes appear pale. Freckles appear darker. The process makes UV light visible, which gives the resulting plates their famous ethereal character
I had brought a vest and a hammer (a reference to a former colleague calling me “a blunt instrument”. I do not just usually walk around with hammers). Guy looked at this, decided we would skip the hammer-as-prop because the depth of field is too thin to keep a hammer in focus alongside a face, and instead suggested we try a mug shot.
His reasoning: mug shots are interesting because the sitter cannot smile or react with their mouth, so all the emotion comes through the eyes. Subtle expression changes radically alter the portrait.
The posing process itself is part of the craft. Guy:
- Sat me in the chair with a posing stand resting against the back of my head (just touching, not pressing, just a reference point to stop me moving forwards or back)
- Studied the angle of my face, looking specifically for the “slice of focus” needed: the profile of my lips and eyes, because that is what the lens would render sharp
- Tilted the camera to match that slice
- Set the lighting
The depth of field on this setup with head-and-shoulders framing is less than a centimetre. Any forward/backward movement of the sitter throws everything out. The posing stand is not optional.
Watching a plate get made
Once the framing was set, Guy went to the darkroom to prepare a plate. This is the part I had really wanted to see.
He started with trophy aluminium: a thin aluminium sheet that has been enamelled. The enamel gives the collodion something to stick to.
He poured collodion onto the plate. Collodion is a mixture of gun cotton, ether, alcohol, and two photographic salts (cadmium bromide and potassium iodide). As the ether and alcohol evaporate from the surface, the collodion forms a skin, much like gloss paint skinning over after a couple of hours.
The pouring technique is genuinely impressive to watch. Guy tilts the plate one way then another, using surface tension at the edges to control where the collodion goes, then rocks it gently to prevent ridge lines forming as it skins. He noted, smiling, that being a former juggler helps with this. He has been doing this for many years and it shows.
Once the skin had formed, the plate went into a bath of silver nitrate, where it sensitises for three minutes. Smoothly into the bath, no jerks (which would leave lines on the plate).
Meanwhile, the developer got mixed: ferrous sulphate, acetic acid, distilled water, a touch of alcohol (as a surfactant, to help the developer flow evenly), and a small amount of potassium nitrate (a restrainer that slows development to make it more controllable).
When the timer went, we shut the darkroom doors, killed the lights, and loaded the sensitised plate into the holder. From this point we were on the clock: the plate had to be exposed, developed, and rinsed before it dried, in roughly ten minutes.
The collodion sourcing problem
A small detail Guy mentioned that is worth knowing. The collodion mixture has to be made by a specialist supplier. Only two people in the UK can supply it. The reason: it contains ether, which is heavily regulated and requires special licences to handle and sell.
This is one of the genuine barriers to entry for wet plate. You cannot order collodion from Amazon. The supply chain is genuinely small, and your access to materials depends on a tiny number of suppliers staying in business. If you are thinking about doing wet plate, this is a logistics issue you need to solve before anything else.
The exposure and development
Plate loaded, framing rechecked, focus rechecked, me back in the posing stand. Guy asked me to put a little defiance in my eyes, like someone had just scratched my favourite lens.
3, 2, 1. The strobe fired.
The exposure is instantaneous because the strobe provides all the light, no ambient contribution. In the Victorian era when this process used natural light, exposures were 10-20 seconds or more for portraits. The modern strobe version compresses that to a single flash.
Plate back to the darkroom. Guy pulled it from the holder, poured the developer in a single even sweep across the surface, and balanced it level while jiggling it gently to keep the developer moving. A negative image slowly appeared. Once shadow detail started showing, he rinsed off the developer with water to stop development.
Out of the darkroom for fixing in sodium thiosulphate, which I watched: the negative image inverts to a positive as the unreacted silver halides dissolve away.
There was the plate. My portrait. Mug shot, eyes with a hint of defiance, sharp on the lips and eyes, slightly out of focus everywhere else, the trademark wet plate UV-visible character making my skin look slightly grubby. “Like a 1930s criminal,” I said. That was what we were aiming for.
![PLACEHOLDER: the first finished plate, the mug shot with the trademark wet plate character]
The other two plates
We did three plates total. The standard Bellingham session.
Plate 2: with my Stenopeika Air Force 4x5 in my lap, “like a baby.” Guy’s idea. He moved my chair back slightly, posed me at an angle with the camera in my lap, and we shot. This plate had some minor flaws (a “developer island” where the developer did not initially spread across part of the plate, some pour marks on the edges), but the expression and composition worked.
Plate 3: with 1950s motorcycle goggles and a hat, Guy’s choice of outfit. This was the most theatrical of the three, with much more contrast (the goggles and the dark hat against pale skin), and Guy noted that he might have slightly underdeveloped this one. I look, by Guy’s assessment, “like a Russian tank driver.” I will take that.
Each plate takes about thirty minutes to fully process, including the rinse and the eventual varnishing with traditional shellac (which Guy does later, after the plates dry). A full session of three plates takes a couple of hours.
What the plates actually look like
The finished plates arrived in beautiful presentation boxes with a small stamp on the back. Guy’s standard packaging.
Looking at them in person is genuinely different from seeing them on a screen. The plates have a depth and a luminosity that no scan or print can capture. When you tilt the plate under light, the image seems to shift and shimmer in a way that flat photographs do not. The silver in the emulsion catches light at different angles, giving the image a three-dimensionality.
There is also, genuinely, a depth of microns within the image where light interacts with the emulsion structure. You can almost see the layers. This is what makes wet plate special. It is not just a photograph; it is a small physical object with its own optical properties.
The trademark UV-rendering character is clearly visible. The dynamic range is narrow but punchy. The depth of field is razor thin. The skin texture is exaggerated. The whole aesthetic is recognisably 19th century, but with a modern subject (me), creating an interesting collision of eras.
I have decided to start a small gallery wall behind me of the various photographic exploits from my videos. Guy’s plates will be the centrepieces.
Why I am not buying a wet plate kit
This is the honest part.
Wet plate is amazing. The results are unique. The process is genuinely engaging. Watching Guy work was a privilege.
But the barriers to entry are real:
- Collodion supply is a logistics problem with only two UK suppliers
- Ether handling requires licences and proper storage
- The studio setup Guy has built up over many years is not cheap or easy to replicate
- The process demands a properly equipped darkroom with a coating area, a sensitising bath, and a development setup
- The skill curve is genuinely steep, judging by how much intuition Guy applies to every step
I can see the appeal completely. I understand why people who go into wet plate get hooked and never come out. But I am at a stage in my own photography where I am building competence across several other large format processes already (paper reversal, dry plate tintypes, conventional film). Adding wet plate would mean abandoning depth in those for breadth in this. Not the right trade for me now.
What I will do instead: if I want a wet plate image, I will commission one from Guy. He is genuinely brilliant at this, the price is fair given what is involved, and the result is far better than I would manage in my first hundred attempts. Outsource the expertise, enjoy the result.
If you are anywhere near Bristol and you want a portrait that does not look like any photograph you have ever owned, book a session with Guy. His Instagram is also worth a long browse.
On Guy himself
A few things worth noting about Guy as a person and a photographer that came across in the session.
He is a former circus performer (juggler, fire performer, comedy musician on saw, among other things) with 22 years of professional performance behind him. He still does the occasional cabaret. This explains both the dexterity of his plate pouring and his comfort directing nervous sitters.
His portrait approach is not about elaborate posing. He looks for emotion in the eyes, specifically. His subtle direction during the session was about adjusting eye expression, not body position. This is part of what makes his portraits feel alive rather than staged.
He learned wet plate originally from Tim at Negative Thinking, the Bristol darkroom collective I covered in another article. The Bristol photography community is small but tightly interconnected, and Tim’s role as teacher to people like Guy is part of why Negative Thinking is worth supporting. Their crowdfunder for new premises has now hit target, but they are still accepting contributions for community projects.
What I took away
Several things:
Wet plate is uniquely beautiful and seeing it in person, holding a finished plate, is different from any reproduction.
The skill bar is genuinely high. I have been doing photography for a long time. Guy is doing something more demanding than most of what I do, and he makes it look easy.
Eye-direction in portraiture is something I want to think about more. Guy’s approach to posing has stayed with me.
Outsourcing to specialists is often the right call when the barrier to entry is high. I will not become a wet plate photographer. I am happy to commission wet plate photographs from one of the best in the world.
Big thanks to Guy for an extraordinary experience. The plates are now drying and varnishing. I will pick them up in a few weeks and start building that gallery wall.