Say hello via text message and join in the conversation!
Step into the shadowy dance of chemicals and light with Prague-born Stephan Kotas, as he unveils the transformative art of Wet Plate (Collodion) Photography amidst Indonesia's tropical landscape. Stephan draws us into his world, where the pursuit of travel photography morphed into a dedication to a craft that is as enchanting as it is exacting. His transition from the immediacy of digital to the deliberation of Wet Plate is not just a tale of artistic evolution but a homage to a medium that insists on intentionality with each frame.
Within the studio walls of our latest episode, we break down the process and intricacies of the entire Wet Plate process and its photographic cultural preservation, the rich tapestry of Indonesian heritage as its background. His large-format silver plates are not mere images; they are timeless narratives etched in silver, celebrating the beauty of imperfection and the authenticity of momentary capture. Stephan's commitment to eco-consciousness ties the past to the present, crafting a dialogue on how traditional methods can influence our digital dominion.
As we close this chapter, we extend our deepest appreciation to Stephan for sharing his passion and expertise. His venture into the rare art form of Wet Plate Photography challenges us to ponder the essence of time and the permanence of the images we hold dear. With a heart full of inspiration, I eagerly anticipate a personal glimpse into Stephan's studio, where the alchemy of wet plate photography comes alive, capturing history through the lens of the present.
Find Stephan's work on his platforms below:
Website: www.stephankotas.com
Instagram: @stephankotas_studio / @stephankotas
In Bali Stephan's work can be seen at Nyaman Gallery in Seminyak: www.nyamangallery.com
_________________________________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.
yoreh.
www.yoreh.co
discount code: moodpdcst.23
My FREE eBook:
www.form.jotform.com/240303428580046
My FREE Lighting Tutorial:
www.mattjacobphotography.com/free-tutorial-sign-up
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay
Website:
www.mattjacobphotography.com
Socials:
IG @mattyj_ay | X @mattyj_ay | YouTube @mattyj_ay | TikTok @mattyj_ay
Say hello via text message and join in the conversation!
Step into the shadowy dance of chemicals and light with Prague-born Stephan Kotas, as he unveils the transformative art of Wet Plate (Collodion) Photography amidst Indonesia's tropical landscape. Stephan draws us into his world, where the pursuit of travel photography morphed into a dedication to a craft that is as enchanting as it is exacting. His transition from the immediacy of digital to the deliberation of Wet Plate is not just a tale of artistic evolution but a homage to a medium that insists on intentionality with each frame.
Within the studio walls of our latest episode, we break down the process and intricacies of the entire Wet Plate process and its photographic cultural preservation, the rich tapestry of Indonesian heritage as its background. His large-format silver plates are not mere images; they are timeless narratives etched in silver, celebrating the beauty of imperfection and the authenticity of momentary capture. Stephan's commitment to eco-consciousness ties the past to the present, crafting a dialogue on how traditional methods can influence our digital dominion.
As we close this chapter, we extend our deepest appreciation to Stephan for sharing his passion and expertise. His venture into the rare art form of Wet Plate Photography challenges us to ponder the essence of time and the permanence of the images we hold dear. With a heart full of inspiration, I eagerly anticipate a personal glimpse into Stephan's studio, where the alchemy of wet plate photography comes alive, capturing history through the lens of the present.
Find Stephan's work on his platforms below:
Website: www.stephankotas.com
Instagram: @stephankotas_studio / @stephankotas
In Bali Stephan's work can be seen at Nyaman Gallery in Seminyak: www.nyamangallery.com
_________________________________________________________
Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.
yoreh.
www.yoreh.co
discount code: moodpdcst.23
My FREE eBook:
www.form.jotform.com/240303428580046
My FREE Lighting Tutorial:
www.mattjacobphotography.com/free-tutorial-sign-up
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay
Website:
www.mattjacobphotography.com
Socials:
IG @mattyj_ay | X @mattyj_ay | YouTube @mattyj_ay | TikTok @mattyj_ay
Let's talk about first of all what is wet plate.
Speaker 2:I never really studied photography, I never really learned about the old techniques. That's pretty much the most difficult photography technique there is.
Speaker 1:I have one original, one of one that's it. Is it good, Is it?
Speaker 2:good, is it not? Did she move? Did she blink? Is it sharp or not? You know he must have failed a lot. Yeah, oh my god, you work with the rock and macaws, which some of them are very dangerous, you know. My goodness Now you can do prints differently. You don't need that negative anymore.
Speaker 1:What are you looking for when you're thinking about?
Speaker 2:the first.
Speaker 1:What I'm trying to do is like do you worry about kind of where photography is going.
Speaker 2:Where it's going, yeah.
Speaker 1:Stefan Kotis is a Prague-born photographer whose artistry spans continents and centuries. After a thriving career in fashion and commercial photography, he felt a shift with the digital era, prompting him to rediscover the enchantment of wet plate photography, a technique from the 1800s surpassed quickly by other modern formats. Immersed in a five-year quest to bring this forgotten process to Indonesia, stefan overcame extreme and lengthy challenges in the tropical climate, crafting his own unique way of doing things, including bespoke chemical solutions and darkroom setups. His silver portraits of Indonesian people, developed in the field with antique wooden cameras, have captivated the art world, reflecting his dedication to preserving the nation's diverse cultures on large format silver plates. And this podcast episode is a bit of a deeper dive into this whole wet plate process. It was certainly a learning experience for me and one of real intrigue, so much so I'm going to go and see him and his process at his studio. So stay tuned for that video, but for now I bring you Stefan Kotis Welcome to the Moon Podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, pleasure to have you here. Thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 1:I know you're a busy man and you live not too close to here, but I appreciate you taking the time. I wanted to kick things off with, I guess, a way to kind of introduce yourself. We're going to talk about your uniqueness as a person and photographer, which truly fascinates me, but give me a background as to who you are in the photography space and how you kind of got into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been doing digital photography for since I was like 18, 19,. For like the last 20 years almost, I started as a travel documentary photographer or I just love, I love traveling. That's how I started, okay, so since high school I've been like traveling around Europe. I'm from Czech Republic, so I've been like hitchhiking around Europe and then I would be going to Morocco, and then I was like 18, 19 and I was thinking I want to go next, next like big adventure. You know, after I finished high school and I was planning to go to Indonesia, I was like that was my dream since a little kid. I love traveling and it was always like really good, and it was always like reading travel books and adventure travel kind of things. So my dream was Indonesia. So I started learning Indonesian language in Prague. That time I just found like some little book and I there was one old lady who was teaching Indonesian language in Prague, so I found her at the time. I found her in the phone book.
Speaker 1:She was very old the phone book Remember phone book.
Speaker 2:It was the phone book, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was like it was 2003, 2004 when I came here and so with her I got some private lessons, I started learning Indonesian and through her actually help, I got into a scholarship program through Indonesian embassy and I got scholarship here. So I actually didn't come here to travel and I just came here for a scholarship program straight away for one year in Jogja and from there I just fell in love with Indonesia. I started traveling constantly, just traveling around Indonesia kind of like YouTube probably now and I started doing pictures and landscapes and mostly travel documentary pictures, landscape, people. That's what I. That's how I started with photography. I never really studied it, I just learned myself from internet, from, you know, just practicing and and learning a bit of like Photoshop editing. At the time it was like it was 2004. Got my first camera, dslr, nikon and from that I I tried to explore more Like. I always tried to learn new things, just like online or wherever and I started doing more fashion. I started doing fashion. I lived in.
Speaker 2:Jakarta for a while doing fashion, commercial photography, art nude I should love art nude, Just anything. Yeah, Just always learning new techniques and and and things. And I didn't start wet plate until like six, seven years ago. That was only when I started doing wet plate and the weird, weird kind of techniques. Until then I was just the like a digital, digital photographer and doing like commercial works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm interested to know kind of, why Indonesia? What is it about this place that really sparks your interest and passion?
Speaker 2:Well, Indonesia, yeah, I feel like at home here, you know, after I live here 20 years. So, uh, In Bali you lived in 20 years I lived. I started in Jogja. That's where I got my scholarship. Yeah, I spent one year there. That's where I learned, uh, Indonesian as well. So there was Java for for one year and it's Java still have like special plays in my heart because like the first place where I kind of get to know Indonesia and the Japanese culture and, uh, Jogja is like the center of Indonesian education, yeah. So so, uh, I spent one year there and then I moved to Bali. I spent two years living in Bali. I was doing travel. I just look for any job I could do here, you know, to live here, so I was doing travel guiding mostly.
Speaker 2:I worked for a travel agency and doing like travel guiding and taking people around Bali and then around Indonesia as well, and and then I moved to Jakarta. I live in Jakarta around six years. I was working there. I was doing modeling there as well.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I was working on TV, like in front of camera as well. Wow, I used to do, I used to be presenting, I had a travel show. Actually, I had a. I had a travel show on, on trans TV.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, cool. I did like a it's like a travel show for like Indonesian yeah, it's like Indonesian market. Yeah, we had like a Saturday morning slot so I would be traveling. That's why I stayed in Jakarta so long, actually, because I I like the job. So we would be shooting one, two episodes per month. I would be going around Indonesia and and do a travel show. That was fun. And then I was the. I was doing photography as well, but not like full time, so I would be shooting like fashion mostly, and always would be like working on my, my art on the side, just mostly art, nudes and landscapes and like and travel photography. Just be traveling all the time wherever I could you know, around Indonesia. And after only that, I moved back to Bali like 10, 12 years ago, and since then I live here now. Yeah, cool, what is it?
Speaker 2:I think, you, I think you answered the question here why Indonesia? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think I mean I know the, I think I know the answer. I've done enough research and we I think that's where and we're talking off air we have a little bit in common in that respect. You know the, the, the cultures here, the subcultures, the history, the diversity, certainly with the people you know, especially when you think you portrait photography, right, the fascination with the different types of people. I mean, I'm putting answers in your mouth, but for me that's it. Is it similar? Is it similar to years that were the interest Mostly the diversity, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:For, like anybody who likes different cultures and traveling, like Indonesia is the whole real. Real because you get so many here, you know, hundreds of languages and ethnic groups and cultures and all the, all the religions, so many different landscapes, right. So, especially in Southeast Asia, I think, whatever any other country has, indonesia has it better, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like for me, there's no point. Go to Thailand, and you know you can find temples better here, or you can. You know volcano jungle. Go to Papua you find. You know primitive tribes, you know there's everything.
Speaker 1:It does yeah.
Speaker 2:And you, you can spend your whole life exploring, and that's I mean, I spent 20 years and it's not, it's not enough yet, yeah, so much.
Speaker 1:I love that about this place. So much Throw in the underwater world as well. That's some of the best diving in the world.
Speaker 2:The nature here is incredible. What is your favorite part of Indonesia?
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's a good question I would. I mean, I love Bali, obviously. I think, close to here, lombok is something that's that is is still very untouched and it still has so much potential. I mean it's, it's stunning. The people there are different but extremely kind and very welcoming. Past that I've done, I've been lucky enough to do a few trips to Raja, to Komodo, and they take my breath away, those places really. I love scuba diving, so I'm, if I'm traveling, I'm trying to combine both above water photography and underwater photography, so I'll you know, hopefully, everywhere I go is both scenically beautiful but also rich in the, the tapestry of the human natures and wildlife, and Indonesia's best place for all of that. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, down by is the best.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's just, it's just incredible. It really is taste my breath away. But I could go back there every week if I could Tell me about the journey from you know we're going to get onto wet play in a minute because I think a lot of people don't know what wet play processing, wet play photography, however you want to label it is. But tell me about kind of the journey to get up to that. You know how, how did you go from fashion photography, landscape, travel photography into finding this old, unique, you know wonderful process of photography? What? What was the journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I never really studied photography. I never really learned about the old techniques. Actually, when I was in high school I did maybe a little bit of analog and like I saw my my father was developing a few times like his analog films, but I never really learned about that much. So I found it on the internet. I think my friend just sent me some video of a guy doing wet play, like it was like a YouTube video where he built his own camera. In one day he built a camera, he bought the chemicals and like in over a weekend he would make like a wet plate shoot and wet plate image. And when I saw it I was like, wow, my God, this is amazing.
Speaker 2:This was like the picture was like so beautiful and the whole process, like when you're making it and you're making it with your own hands. You know it's, it's very hands-on technique and the look of it is just so different.
Speaker 2:And then you, you see the image come into life in front of you you know, it's in your hands, it's a physical image, it's not like computer screen and electronical file, you know so. So that was the first time actually, and I was like he was like hey, you should do it, and I was like fuck, no, I'm not. Like this was like portrait technique. I wasn't really so much into portraits, you know, okay. Okay, because it feels like kind of boring to me, like on digital I was shooting people but not like specializing in portraits. So I was like no, not really. But then I kind of just just keep thinking about it and and learning about it a bit and what I find out that when you should wet plate you it's very technically difficult. It's pretty much the most difficult photography technique there is and it's very unique. And one of the uniqueness there is is you're getting a tin type. You can shoot tin type. You can shoot a direct, positive image.
Speaker 1:Okay, so stop. Let's talk about, first of all, what is wet plate and, second of all, what is tin type. Let's define those just for the audience a little bit before we continue. So yeah, wet plate is a wet plate.
Speaker 2:It's called a wet plate clothing photography, but played the clothing process. So it's basically one of the oldest, the oldest photography techniques. So to understand what it is, to understand how is it so unique, we need to understand history of photography. So do you know, like when? How old is the history of photography? When is the first photography?
Speaker 1:1820, 1822?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like 1820 was like the first what we call a photograph basically made. There was like some. What is photography? Photography is recording light on some light sensitive material. So since thousands of years ago people knew the concept of camera, camera obscura, of pinhole camera. That's the effect when the light comes through the tiny hall and it projects the image from the outside world on the wall, or there was like there would be like one big room like this, for example you just make a small hall in the wall and you would project the world outside. You would project on this wall here and smaller version of that would be the camera right Be like this room, just in a smaller, and you put the lens and you project. The light comes through the lens and you project the image on the big wall.
Speaker 2:So people knew about that. They used it for drawing, to make more realistic paintings and stuff like that, or just to look around. There would be like towers in the cities and people would just be looking inside what is outside. So it was a known phenomenon of camera obscura. But the question is how to record the light, how to record the image that was created through the lens, and for that you need light sensitive materials. So during 17, 18 century people start knowing there's like some chemicals that react on light and they managed to record some images. To put the light sensitive material on that plane and when the light hit it they would just record that image. But the problem is they didn't know how to keep it because you would take that image out on the light, it would still be sensitive to light and it would just disappear it would never expose and it would disappear.
Speaker 2:So they were fighting with that for a few centuries probably and they needed to figure out how to develop the image and how to fix it. Fixing is when you actually stop the chemicals from react on light. So these images, these early images, they could record them, they would have them, but you need to keep them in the dark and you could just show them to people, like in very dark room, just to look at it quickly, not to overexpose with light, and eventually they would disappear. Okay. But then came like the early 1820, it was the French guy who had this first picture and he showed outside of the house. It was some kind of asphaltum. He used some kind of asphaltum that react on light and that's kind of the first image that we know.
Speaker 2:And then the next technique was daguerotype. There was an image made of mercury vapor and some silver based chemicals, like all these light sensitive materials like silver based, and it was still very complicated. The exposure it's very slow. You know these techniques are. The ISO is very slow, so you have exposure times in matter of hours or days, you know. So with daguerotype it was mostly like minutes. You needed few minutes of exposure to create the light, and the next step was the wet plate. And with the wet plate is basically kind of the first technique where we talk about like photography, that's when it become easier, much cheaper, cheaper materials, and also they fastened the exposure times to matter of seconds, few seconds or up to a minute. Yeah, depends how much light you have. And so it was 1853. Yeah, that's when wet plate comes to life, and the complexity of it is that you need it's called wet plate. It means that the chemicals are still wet, so you're working with the light, sensitive chemicals.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Which you take, just a normal plate like size of your notepad. There you take aluminum plate or glass, which is like the vessel for the chemicals. Then you pour liquid chemicals on it. You would pour the chemicals on it. It's a mix of collodium, collodium with salts.
Speaker 1:Also, collodium is a type of chemical.
Speaker 2:Collodium is just the vessel to bend it together.
Speaker 1:It's like a glue.
Speaker 2:let's say you premix the collodium with cadmium bromide and there's different chemicals ammonium iodide, and there's few receipts that you can do and then you dip it in a silver nitrate. So it's a mix of these two chemicals, basically, that make the light sensitive film. So when these two chemicals mix, they start reacting on light. So when you prepare this plate in the dark room, you need to work in the dark room. When you take it out from the silver, it's already reacting on light, so you have to work in the dark room, switch on the safety light only and you put it in a plate holder and you will bring that plate to the camera. You put it in the camera, make the exposure and bring it back to the dark room.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the plate just for people watching is the tin type right. The plate is the thing that the photograph gets exposed onto.
Speaker 2:We call. The result is tin type is when you shoot on black aluminum plates. That's what you call tin types If you shoot it on glass. You can shoot on glass. It would be called ambrotype. Okay, depends on the vessel of the plate. Okay, so you shoot on tin type. I shoot mostly tin types on the black aluminum and you have some here, right, I don't have the tin types here, okay, you have the, but I have some prints here.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, yeah, okay. So you get the plate out of the camera into a dark room.
Speaker 2:You expose it in the camera and you need to run straight to the dark room because the chemicals needs to stay back. That's why we call it red plate collodion.
Speaker 2:Got it okay Because you work with wet chemicals, liquid chemicals Okay, and you only have a limited amount of time before they dry to finish the whole reaction process to create the image. So that's why it's very hard to do in tropics, because the humidity and temperatures it's much higher here than Europe and it's drying so quickly. So from the sensitizing I have like three minutes to do the whole process. My model has to be ready. I have to quickly expose it. I have to run to the dark room and quickly develop it Before it dries, unless there's no image. Wow. So you develop it. That's when the image kind of comes alive. You see it coming, it start appearing in front of your eyes. You have to stop it at the right moment, not to over develop it. Also, what?
Speaker 1:happens if you over develop it.
Speaker 2:It would kind of disappear. It would just be very kind of foggy and low contrast.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So you need to know when to stop it. You already know in the development process if you're getting good image or not with the speed of the reaction.
Speaker 2:So, it usually take about 10 to 15 seconds. You see it appearing. If it's very slow, it doesn't. 15 seconds, 20 seconds there's no image. Or very low, you see, ah, it's underexposed. If it's too fast, it's overexposed. So you can adjust the exposure a little bit with the development. If it's overexposed in the camera you can like do faster development and you still get like a good exposure there.
Speaker 2:But anyway, after the development you stop it with water, wash off the chemicals and you put in a fixer. And in a fixer you get the positive image. And that's the reason why I do it, why it caught my eye especially, is the direct positive, because with this technique you can do direct positive image. Normally in most of photography techniques, right, they, you're doing negatives, you shoot negatives and from that you make prints, which was what we were people doing from before as well, because they always wanted to do prints. They didn't want to do one piece. Yeah, they wanted to be able to distribute the number of images you know in the prints and in the newspapers and everywhere, so that time they were not doing many direct positives.
Speaker 2:but now you can do prints differently, you don't need that negative anymore. So for me that was like wow, the direct positive is one piece of art, it's the uniqueness, it brings the art closer to painting, or it's an artifact that you can have the bigger value on the art market. Because before that I was already like doing art, photography, and I tried to do to sell my art in galleries. But photography has like different status in the art market because it's duplicable. Yeah, Because when you photography is not like one piece of statue, it's not one piece of painting, but you can bring one image, you know, 100 times, million times. So the buyer doesn't put a big value on that right, so you can do limited prints, whatever, but it's still duplicable art.
Speaker 2:But with this thing and this technique, when you do direct positive, it means dead one thin type. There's one positive image that comes straight from my camera. The silver plate is only one. There's no other one like that. You know, and this was like kind of piece of a puzzle that you can put a higher value on your art, you know, which is not possible with digital photography, with digital prints and stuff like that. So it was one of the reasons why I actually looked into this. And the other reason is just the uniqueness of the images, the uniqueness of the look, of how that plate image look, because it has a distinctive look which you cannot fake with any other technique, with any editing. You know, like analog film, whatever other film, you can kind of fake it with digital editing. Yeah, you can give the digital image, the feel of analog.
Speaker 2:You know, with the right editing, whatever, but that plate you cannot fake it anywhere. You know, firstly it's the physical image that you get and secondly, this is what we call a blue light sensitive material, blue light sensitive film. So that's what gives a lot of it. The unique look of it comes from that, because the chemicals that we use in that plate, they only react on blue light on the spectrum. You know, there's a light spectrum right From the visible light spectrum. It's from red to yellow to green to blue, right. So these chemicals only react on the part of the blue spectrum, a little bit over that to the UV spectrum.
Speaker 2:So, basically, it's actually reacting on an invisible light that we cannot see with our eyes. That's why the look of the pictures is so unique and so weird to us. When we look at it, then normal black and white picture, so it means Everything that is on the other side of the spectrum, like the yellows and the reds. They are black. The chemicals don't see them. So that's what's changing a lot the look of the people, Cause, for example, in your skin there's a lot of red color a lot of orange, you know, especially with the darker skin people, a lot of melanin people or tan skin.
Speaker 2:So the more dark skin you have, the stronger will be this effect. That's why I like to shoot more like the dark skin people or in the Asian people looks actually, the effect is even stronger, the unique look of that place. You know I love that and that's also something you need to think about when you shoot that the whatever is red, whatever is yellow, will be black, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Camera cannot see it. That's why we use red light in the dark room, because it doesn't react on these chemicals. So that's another unique thing that I really liked. That actually the result. You cannot fake it with any kind of editing or something like that and then it's like so unique. Another unique thing about it is the way the chemicals flow. You know you're working with the liquid chemicals. It's very, it's different every time. You know there is like it's the whole process of many steps of chemical reactions and they are all altering the look of the final result.
Speaker 2:Working with your hands, you're smelling the chemicals Before every shoot. You mix your own solutions basically. So it's never the same. It's never the same the chemicals age. So if I mix them today, I shoot tomorrow will be one thing. If I use one month old chemicals will be a bit different, and so there's all these effects that make every piece like unique and different.
Speaker 2:And it's never perfect. There's always some like some dust. You know some. You try to be very clean with this technique because every little dust, your hair, whatever, whatever flows in the air, you can see it on the plate later on and you also the chemicals flowing. You know you have these edges you can. If you put the developer wrong, you will have like the stains of the developer and so many different things. So all these like chemical marks which make it. It's technically, it's imperfection. But now, when with the digital photography it's so used to like perfect, sharp, crisp, contrast, the images with vivid colors, so this is like so beautiful. You know when you actually see the imperfection, you know of the of these techniques.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. The perfection of imperfection is now something that's sought after and artistically it's a value, right. It's something that isn't being done by millions of people with the help of digital cameras that spray and pray, and then they don't really think about the shots. I mean, I imagine with your photos, you know, before you even press that shutter button you are super prepared with, obviously, your dark room and chemicals ready to go. But with the subject as well, I mean, how does your preparation get affected? Oh no, I rephrase it what is your preparation like with the subject, If you've got them ready to go in front of the camera, or how do you get them ready? Is it just what you know? You've got one shot essentially you can't take, or can you take a couple and then go and develop them quickly?
Speaker 2:No, no, you do one shot per time. Yeah, so it's a lot of preparation, like I don't actually shoot too often. It's very. Firstly, it's very expensive. You know, every plate costs you a lot, especially here in Indonesia, where I'm importing most of the chemicals. And it's just, to get the chemicals is very hard, you know it's very hard. In Europe, the US, you can buy them in a shop I mean, it's not too many shops anymore who sell it, but you can still get them. Here is nothing like that. So I cannot buy the solutions. What I do is I get the raw chemicals. So actually, what I had to learn here to do it here, I had to learn to mix the solutions also. That's which is the whole. Next, like profession, you know, like chemistry.
Speaker 1:Did you know anything about chemistry before this? No, I hated chemistry.
Speaker 2:I hated in high school. My mom was like what are you doing now? Because I was always like the worst in chemistry and I'm surprised, I kind of I don't enjoy it, but I kind of learn what I need and it's become interesting right, but it's very hands-on, you know, you just. But there was another actually thing that I had to learn to do it. You know Like I mean, to successfully do bad play in Indonesia took me six, seven years to where I am now Very slow progress and it's never, it's a life long project, like it's so many things. Every shoot I see some problems and you try to solve them and it's like never ending problem solution. You know Solving but yeah, so before every shoot you need to make your own solutions first.
Speaker 2:So, you work with the raw chemicals, which some of them are very dangerous, you know Flammable, explosive, very poisonous, cancerous. You know you have to be very careful with that. And it's another thing and just a small thing and you need to get your chemicals ready. Another thing is the shoot itself. When you shoot models, when I shoot my portraits, you need to I teach the models about the process, how we do it. I have kind of like a routine now, but it's very different from a digital shoot. It's very slow process.
Speaker 2:I always tell the models to be patient. Just to be patient, just kind of expect you'll be doing a lot of waiting, you know a lot of sitting in one pose, because first thing is the styling. You pick the styling. I kind of do that ahead, you know. I know what I want to do, what kind of costume, if I do a lot of traditional costumes, right. So we prepare the costume. I usually have a stylist. We do the look, yeah, but then we pick the pose yeah. With these old techniques, when you look at old pictures, it's always very simple, actually very stiff poses yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it's long exposure so you cannot do like you don't have much choice with the pose. You have to be very steady, pose which the model can hold for at least few seconds. You know that's why you do neutral expressions usually you don't do smiles much because it looks unnatural when people hold a smile for five seconds.
Speaker 1:You know it's like yeah, so we do it, and it's moving.
Speaker 2:You do, yeah, you do usually very neutral expressions. And another thing the hardest thing is to get a sharp image with this technique because to do five, my exposures are around three, five, seven seconds. Depends on how much sun I have, because the ISO of the chemical is like one, 1.5 or something like that. So it's like, let's say, 50 times less sensitive than ISO 100, yeah, it's very slow. So in here when it's sunshine, when it's full direct sun, I get around two, three seconds. If it gets cloudy it's like five, six seconds. I just look at the sky. I know you cannot measure the light much. You don't measure the light. There's no light meter. You can say no light meter, you don't have a separate light meter or anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's react on the UV light only, so it's not really a light meter for that. So I just kind of know by practice now you just look at the sky and you kind of get the exposure. And then you said in the development, process.
Speaker 1:You can kind of get it immediately like, oh, I need to develop this a bit faster, or just slow.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you would. I don't do it anymore Like test play to check the light, because I kind of know, but yeah, you cannot measure the exposure. It's by experience, basically, which takes some time you must have failed a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my God.
Speaker 2:Hundreds of plays at home which are. But it's not only about exposure. It's the easier thing. It's mostly about the chemical combinations and receipts and because you got like five, six reactions, chemical reactions which needs to successfully create the image, and if there's one problem you don't know where it is, or it's sometimes hard to find where is the problem, which reaction is the problematic one. So you just do constant like trials. You know where you like, change one thing and then change it, and then looking for the mistake, and but then every chemical batch that you make is different, so it's never ending. It's so hard, man.
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Speaker 1:And before we head back into the podcast, please just take a moment to explore Yore's collection. As a special treat for you, my wonderful audience, Yore is offering an exclusive discount. So head over to our website and use the code in the description for a 10% discount off your jewelry purchase. The link in details are all in the description. So thanks so much for listening and I'll let you get back to the podcast now. Tell us a bit more about the camera then. So, when you've got the subject ready to go, you've briefed them. What would you know? It's a large format camera, right? What is the size?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get to the shoot, like when I get the model I style up, yeah, then I will sit here, I will pose her. So we decide what pose we're going to do, what angle. I find her angle, let's say front tail or side pose, like 45 or something.
Speaker 1:What are you looking for when you're thinking about the pose?
Speaker 2:Depends like how she looks. Well, what is her angle, what we want to show if we have like earrings or what's kind of styling if we want to show the hair from the side or front tail few different things. What is the lighting if it's better for like like side light portrait or top light portray?
Speaker 1:So your intent with the pose is okay, get the person and get some kind of visual story with that person, but it's more about the traditional clothing, or what is the purpose that you're trying to?
Speaker 2:get with the. What I'm trying to do is like a cultural portrait, like traditional portraits of Indonesian ethnic groups. That's basically what I'm focusing on. So I'm showing the costume.
Speaker 2:I'm showing the costume the look of. I want it to be like when I, let's say, I shoot Balinese girl in could be wedding costume or dance costume, it should show in one image to have like, okay, this is Balinese. I try to, I look for models also in that way, like to have the Balinese look different from Japanese For us. If you've lived here longer you can tell the difference of Balinese, japanese, sumatra, kors, papua and other ethnic groups right. So try to be, try to look for the typical face of that ethnic. But okay, when I shoot you get the pose.
Speaker 2:And then what is very hard is the camera. The camera is big, it's a large format. It's big, it's heavy, it's sitting on a tripod. It's very hard to frame it, to get the level, to get the height of the camera, to get the angle to the model, because you're looking, you're looking at it on the ground glass. That's like the ground glass at the back of the big camera is the glass where the image is reflected and that's where you like go under the blanket and looking at that you cover yourself with like dark clouds to see the reflection of the image on the back of the camera and it takes like few minutes, or can be five, ten, 15 minutes to set the camera on the tripod in the exactly like angle when the model needs to hold the pose. So she needs to be patient. She's just sitting there in her pose and I'm like angling the camera and that's the one shot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when I get the angle, I also put in like a brace holder. You put a brace holder on her neck. I saw that. Yeah, because that's for the reference of her position. She cannot move from that place because you're focusing. It's very narrow to the field. Yeah, I'm using the anti-glances, like all the lenses which are which adding to the beautiful, unique look of the wet plate, because it's these old lenses. They are imperfect, you would say imperfect. They are very narrow to the field and they are usually only sharp. They are very sharp but only in the middle and towards the edges of the image. It's blurring and they're making the old Petzfal lenses. They make like a circular blur which is really beautiful and really, really special.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's also very much portrait technique, because in portraits you can work with that, just have a part of the image sharp and there are a lot of blur around. And this also when you look at the old pictures or portraits, you will see they framing it differently, they framing the person in the middle. You don't frame it in two thirds like you would do in digital, mostly like framing the image in two thirds the face but you framing it more in the middle of the frame because that's where it's the sharpest, sharpest. Okay, so yeah, you would frame the camera and then I actually explained to her what is gonna happen next. You know, I did it this morning, I just had a shoot. So every time the issue should be new models, you always have to explain to them.
Speaker 2:So, basically, after I frame it, then I need to go to darkroom, then I need to go to darkroom to sensitize the plate. That's what I'm doing, the puring and dipping in the silver. That's when you're creating the light sensitive film and it takes me like five minutes in the darkroom to prepare the liquid film. And because it's wet plate, I only have, like I told you, three, four, five minutes before it dries. So when I come off the darkroom everything needs to be very quick. You know it's like one step after another, so I prepare her first. You know when I come out you need to be sitting here with the brazen holder. You know, get your position very quick. I could clearly focus the camera and then I put the plate on the back of the camera, I close the lens Because how we do exposure here there's no shutter you know, there's no shutter with the old cameras, because you don't.
Speaker 2:There's no long. I mean fast shutter speeds. It's very long shutter speed right. So you only do the exposure with the taking of the lens cap. That's how you let the light in.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:There's enough time so I take off the lens cap. That's where the exposure starting, the lights start coming into the camera. You just count. I just look at this guy. I see three, four, five seconds, how much I need.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:I tell her okay, freeze, don't move, open the lens One, I just count and she needs to be frozen. She cannot blink, she cannot breathe, like I tell her just to totally freeze if possible. And then, when I cover the lens back, we are done and we need to rush to the dark room to quickly develop Because the plate is drying, the clock is ticking, so I need to develop it. And then, when you develop it, you see the. It looks like a negative image, basically first, and then you put it in the fixer where you wash off the unexposed silver, and then you see the clear, positive image.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if that doesn't come out as expected, you just do it again. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Exactly. That's why you do a lot of preparation. You just do a lot of briefing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you, you like what you see, you make sure the styling is good, you make sure the angle is good, because every image costs me I counted it, I think like $20, $30 for one plate, just for the materials, you know, and the whole process is like 20, 20 minutes usually.
Speaker 1:And are these these?
Speaker 2:this most. If she moved, if she bling yeah, she owes you $30.
Speaker 1:Are these clients paying you for these generally these photos, or is it? More of a personal passion.
Speaker 2:It's more personal, I like to shoot personal images.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't. I don't do many private like commercial portraits. I don't focus on that. But sometimes people, people want it and I do it for them. I shoot it. But firstly it's it's difficult because people see my images and they love them and they think, oh, I want to do this, so cool. But they don't know how they're going to look. It's changing the look of people very much, you know. So it's not guaranteed, especially for girls, that they will like how they look on it themselves. You know, because it's changed their skin and especially with girls, it's bringing our imperfection more, not making them more beautiful. It make you more ugly, you know. Your wrinkles come out more. Every spots on your skin, freckles makes you look older in general, like the. The whole look of that image is like old school. Yeah, and it, it, it. It in general makes you look a bit older than you are. With guys it's actually better Like guy portraits. With this technique you look kind of more cool and reggae and like you know, like moral, it brings some character out, Okay so.
Speaker 2:But it's kind of tricky with the people you know, and then I don't want them to be unhappy with the picture, and then they have to pay me and then they don't pay me. I lose a lot of money and time, you know. So I don't focus on that, I focus more on my art, but I do pride portraits once a while also. Can we see a couple of you images?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love the look of them. And you know what? What sparks my interest about this is just the authenticity of it, you know and when you said it's like more like a painting, I mean just you explaining that process from start to finish. Is you just like a painting, right?
Speaker 2:It's. You put a lot, of a lot of focus on one frame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so manual, everything is so manual. You are creating from start to finish.
Speaker 2:I have like this few postcards, which is one of some of my, like, favorite portraits from recent times.
Speaker 1:And yeah, behind every good one is like 10, 20 bed ones you know that's Stephen with me and digital photography. I can't, I can't imagine. Yeah, of course, I love just the, the tones. They're just so nice. Yeah what is this border? This kind of these? These are the imperfections you're talking about develop.
Speaker 2:I like the flow of the chemicals. You can see, this is when you're pouring the plate. That's how the chemicals flow around, and then they don't always reach the edge of the plate. So that's what create these borders.
Speaker 1:But that adds so much character to the, to the image.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of actually you can do it perfectly, but I don't worry about it much. I kind of want to keep it around there because from there you can see it's a bit played as well.
Speaker 1:That's fucking insane. And then it's like different marks you can see sometimes the developer flowing if you make a mistake. You can see a lot of dust and scratches, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:It's very nostalgic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the look of it is just so unique and beautiful. But yeah, you would need to. It's so different. That's why I like to do like BTS, like videos to people to see what our eyes see you know the reality and then what the red plate camera see, because it's so different.
Speaker 1:Wait why this is color.
Speaker 2:This color is a different technique.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I see what you mean here by the kind of this blurry vignetting on the lens. Her face is sharp but everything else is. I mean, maybe she was moving a bit but that might be the lens.
Speaker 2:It was actually pretty long, I suppose. I always wanted to have a picture of like girl carrying water because, like a common, common team from like 19th century or early 20th century Indonesia women, there will be women work to carry water. It's like common, common shot you can see like women with the water vessels. So I was trying to shoot this and then finally I got it with Lola. I love this picture.
Speaker 1:Some of my favorite from recent time.
Speaker 2:It's very hard. It was already dark, it was afternoon, it was like seven, eight seconds, but she's, she hold it still like very well. It's very sharp and it's not easy because you have to balance the vessel. It's heavy, you know. It wasn't full of water but it's still kind of heavy and it's hard not to not to move, you know.
Speaker 1:For people watching. We're going to put these on the screen For people listening. We'll put the link to your site.
Speaker 2:There's only part of the story, if you only listen.
Speaker 1:There's something about portraits that me, being a portrait photographer, I'm biased, but you know, look at these. Obviously they're incredible photos, something about human faces that just give so much depth and spark. Yeah, they're posing, yeah, it's staged, but that, for me, just even adds more, because you're focusing so much on their face and you know what is behind those eyes, right, what is what is behind, what is going on in their head, adding the cultural kind of nuances with their clothes and stuff like that, and then you add in the aesthetics of your processing. It's just fantastic. Absolutely Love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm trying to style it with the team of the ethnic culture. You know, like, this is Java, this is Javanese model, with the Javanese carved window. You know, this is Ariel. She's like a famous actress, so she has the Javanese background. So we decided to shoot like Javanese style. Yeah, you know, again, like the Japanese chair, japanese dress. So, yeah, to keep it in that style, because what I'm trying to do is follow the 19th century look, because this is 19th century technique and this technique has not been done much in Indonesia because, as I told you, you come from 1850s, but it was only practiced for a short period of time, maybe like 20 years, before they come up with new technique and easier techniques, you know, and the techniques where you don't need to develop the picture straight away. That's the hardest thing about wet play. Basically, you need to shoot with your darkroom. You cannot just go in the field and shoot and develop it next week or next month. You need to have a darkroom where you shoot, which is very impractical, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I was going to ask you about when you go on location. If you're going, obviously not everyone's coming to you all the time. Yeah, so far. Yeah, I don't shoot on locations. Oh, you do not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just shoot at my studio, pretty much all the time To shoot on location is a whole another story, a whole another headache and expand, and that's something I am trying to do and it's my goal for the future to be traveling with this technique. But I only did it like twice and it's you bringing, like you bring your darkroom to the field, so you bring a lot of things, you bring chemicals, you bring a lot of equipment. You didn't bring big cameras and, yeah, I bring like a tent Usually people use depends what, how big is your flash format? But I do like six by eight, which is I do like a big tent, like it's like a fishing tent which is very dark inside. But it's so much more difficult than shooting in my studio because everything changes. You know, I must do a kind of my routine and everything is kind of set up already. When I shoot, away is hard, it's usually the temperatures are different, you know.
Speaker 1:I see my darkroom.
Speaker 2:I have aircon and I have exhaust and this and then the tent, you just it just gets so hot and humid and the chemical smell is super strong and I lose, like what do you call it like a mask?
Speaker 1:Can you sweat it?
Speaker 2:And you're sweating and everything is so fast. You know the hotter the temperature, the faster every reaction is. So you used to certain routine and then this changes and it's just so hard and yeah, and it's like small there. So that's my kind of next goal is to upgrade my technique to that and start traveling with it. But I haven't done it much and that's the complexity of best play. That's why it's so hard and it's so complicated and that's why nobody really shooting it, unless you crazy, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's even you know. I shoot medium format, but digital I have some bad medium format and it's for me like it's so much more of a mindful experience and you know you have to, so much thought goes into it because it's not a digital camera like we know these days all the functions and automatic this, and that you have to just think about it more. But that's you know, compared to this, it's fucking easy right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think it's like as complicated as that plate is really crazy.
Speaker 1:But you know that adds uniqueness and I think that's so important as an artist, to have some level of uniqueness. To be truly original is, I think, very difficult, but to at least be unique in your genre and this is, if you took this started being able to take on location that would just add a completely different level to your uniqueness as a photographer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely my next goal because I've done a lot of like portraits in studio I want to do, I want to do some landscape, because it's just good technique for landscapes. Also, I want to shoot. One of my next dreams is to go to Java and shoot the old temples old like Hindu Java Hindu temples and I just go all around Indonesia. You know, for the next 20 years of my life I'll be like I'm gonna go to Sumba, you know. Shoot the people there, the shamans there, the women and everybody. Go to Papua, go to go to Diacs, go to Battax, go. Yeah, I should basically create a body of work of Indonesian ethnic groups in their traditional costumes, shot on that plate, because it's something that hasn't been done yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's.
Speaker 1:I don't think many actually, because my dream is something very similar, but not not on what plate, and more about that. You know the people and those ethnic groups and their specific practices, that what they do as a. You know their ancient practices as a culture, but I don't see many bodies of work doing that. You see other countries, especially African countries, people going to like Ethiopia, rwanda or wherever these places and they and they do these beautiful books and beautiful bodies of work and they're amazing, but I don't see many of Indonesia. I see a lot of travel photographers do landscape stuff, see that all the time. But in terms of the people and the diversity of the, the cultures and the ethnic groups here I haven't come across many. There's been some documentaries and obviously people have shot a lot here, but for me as well, I'd love to just do the whole of this country somehow before I die and just photograph as much of it before, like we're talking off air before it really just gets modernized and a lot of these.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you it's losing. The culture is disappearing very quickly.
Speaker 1:And as one more.
Speaker 2:I'd like come on.
Speaker 1:I need to see all these people.
Speaker 2:I love Sumba, for example, and I was there first time 20 years ago. It was just one flight a week, you know, to go to Sumba. It was very far, even though it's just one flight from Bali, right, and I went to shoot Pasola there on digital, you know, the Pasola festival and there was, there was just me and National Geographic there. I was like almost no tourist and compared with Sumba, now, you know, like, the young culture, young generation, they just they losing so much culture in just one generation. It keeps disappearing and the languages keep disappearing and traditions, which is, yeah, I mean the people's life is getting better, yeah, in a way, but the loss of culture and traditions is also like it's a significant loss for humanity.
Speaker 1:I guess there's a good way of putting it, I mean, on one hand, it's good for the people that their standard of living is increasing. You know, generic, generally speaking, but for us, and for just depth of humanity right, we want to be able to have these cultures still around and celebrate them and experience them.
Speaker 1:And that's what travels really all about, right, traveling and experiencing different cultures. And if they all get eroded and they all end up, you know, tiktok generation, then I don't know what is left for society. How do you, with your kind of 1850s methodology with photography and, you know, wanting to preserve that way of photographing do you try and translate that into the modern world in terms of? You know, I know you're obviously active on social media and you're trying to you know, certainly do BTS and maybe educate a little bit more about this process, do you? Is that a big part of your thought process and goals for the futures, to kind of expose this to more people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to do the body of earth.
Speaker 2:That's why, like, my main goal is it's like my I find my purpose, kind of life purpose, in this technique and in having the chance to do something that hasn't been done before, which is kind of it's very rare and it's very hard to find, and I feel very lucky actually to have found this, you know. But, um, yeah, so what I want to do is try to shoot as many ethnic groups and cultures of Indonesia on this medium over the years, and that's going to be. You know, every trip out of my studio is a big trip. It's an expensive trip. It's like just imagine bringing like two, three hundred kilo of equipment and chemicals to like Sumba and be there probably like a month and try to get like 10, 20 good plates. You know, that's like it'll be like old school expeditions, you know, and the old school photographers in 19th century go with the in the wild west, in the lagoon, and just go from city to city and try to sell some some images to people. So that's what I want to do. And what did you ask?
Speaker 2:What I want to what I'm doing with that. I'm just kind of I'm doing prints. I'm starting to work with galleries. I sell prints in the galleries. I do sell the originals also, the tin types, sometimes not too many, but I'm trying to make make it profitable, to get the money going so I can just keep keep doing that. So I'm selling the original tin types also sometimes, but they are quite expensive and I feel I feel sad sometimes to let them go because they're so special.
Speaker 2:There's not many photographers in the world that do wet plate, and most of them not everybody selling actually the originals, the tin types also, cause, yeah, it's where it's the one piece, the baby.
Speaker 1:You know you could keep that for 20 years and imagine the value of it.
Speaker 2:There's another thing about it the wet plate, wet plate image or the tin type. It's the most durable form of image that we have until now. There is, no, no, nothing more durable than that a physical image because, it's an image that is made of.
Speaker 2:It's on metal metal or glass, which is very durable materials and it's made of silver. So these are very durable materials. If you compare it with the prints right on a paper, you know, with ink or something like, your prints will fade in 10, 20 years. They will unless you keep them in some super good archive with no humidity, maybe 100 years. The original tin types or the glass negatives, they they should last hundreds and thousands of years, so like when you look at the old, old pictures from 19th century. They look the same now as they look before and they will probably keep looking that way for many hundreds of years. Like famous tin type is the portrait of Abraham Lincoln, for example, from US or there's few, like famous tin types.
Speaker 2:That has been done and you can still look them up in some archives or museums and, and what is interesting, that until now, like governments, they're using this technique to to archives, like very important documents on this medium, because it's very, very durable form of image, you know, comparing to any prints or anything. So that's another level of that that is interesting. Yeah, but I'm trying to do to do prints or so because, like, yeah, I have the direct positive from the camera, right, but it's a small. It's a small image. It's. It's as big as my camera because you do it on the back of your camera, so as big as your camera. That's the size of your, of your tin type so, which is kind of small to put on the wall yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I also do prints and I like to do different kind of prints, like on, on, on, on, on, on, on on, like a handmade papers I use a banana paper Cool. I have some new papers now. I'm trying now and do like the the classic printing techniques, not just like digital prints, but I've just recently been doing like gum oil prints and cyanotype prints and maybe silk screen and two different types of just contact printing, which is again handmade, you know, because my images are handmade. So I just want to, when I make a print, I also want to make it like the old school, like craft kind of a work of art and not just a digital print.
Speaker 1:So how do? How do you get it from tin type to digital print? Is it just as simple as scanning?
Speaker 2:I just scan it. I scan it with a digital camera.
Speaker 2:I have like a setup for that that I do because it's very reflective. I I should bring you the tin type. I didn't think about it actually, sorry, because the tin type is a. It's very reflective. When you look at it it's on black aluminum and the image is made of silver, but it depends on how the light reflecting on it, you see it a bit differently. So it's very reflective. So I have like a setup that I do not to to get the best out of the image, so I scan it with a digital camera and then, yeah, I pick digital five which I can print easily. Or for the contact printing techniques, you can now do digital negative. So you just print it on a transparent sheet, you flip it in Photoshop to negative image and you print it on transparent sheet. So you get, you got a digital negative.
Speaker 2:So it's got like any size, you can make big ones, so you can make big contact prints from that. So that's why I can shoot the tin types. I can shoot the positives, because before people were focusing on getting negatives and making prints of that, but now you can get negative the other way.
Speaker 1:So how do you fund this? I mean, you still do commercial photography work, right? Is that something that's?
Speaker 2:I don't do it as much anymore. I try to. I used to do commercial digital for a long time. I used to do a lot of fashion and resorts in Bali lifestyle. I never really liked it so much Like. I always like to do my own project, my own concepts and direction and everything. But I do it less and less and just I don't know. I just try to. When I have money, I spend it on this, you know.
Speaker 2:And then sometimes I start selling prints. Sometimes I make money from selling prints and just try to make the ends meet and keep going with that and it's kind of slowly getting bigger and bigger. But basically I'm still at the beginning. Like for six, last six, seven years I've been just learning the technique. Actually, just like last year I would say, I learned this technique to be confident, to be able to produce the good quality of image like steadily you know, to be able to keep doing it and in a good level of quality of the image. And that took me a long time because of the difficulty, because this technique in do it in Europe is hard but it's still.
Speaker 2:You can learn it over a weekend. You know the technique If you have the chemicals and everything. You can do a workshop and you will learn it over weekend like the technical things. But to do it in tropics it's just a whole different level. It's the humidity and the temperatures here just make it impossible. I had to come up with like new chemical formulas and change the process of the whole reactions to make it work here. It took me so long and that's why nobody do it here, because it was like considered like pretty much impossible or very, very hard, and you cannot get the chemicals. So it's just constant. You just constantly have some headache, you know, with this, you know, and then you shoot for a while and then your chemicals are finished and then you try to get more chemicals and you cannot find them and you cannot ship them because they are dangerous. So nobody will ship them to you from abroad. And if somebody will ship them, they are fucking expensive, you know, because it's just important.
Speaker 1:You have to pay tax. Yeah, it's huge.
Speaker 2:So yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just a bit crazy.
Speaker 2:So I kind of managed to kind of get where I am because I just kind of fell in love with it and just to really keep pushing.
Speaker 1:It must be very rewarding to go through all of that, not to mention that what you have to do with on location, but with the subject or the processing, the whole, you know, production value, just the whole thing to get one shot, it must be very rewarding. When you get, you know, amazing shots like this and see it on the 10 type must be extremely satisfying. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:Especially the moment in the dark room when you're developing it and you see the image come alive.
Speaker 1:Literally coming appearing in front.
Speaker 2:And then you put in a fixer and then you see is it good, is it good, is it not? Did she move, did she blink? Is it sharp or not? You know, yeah, it's amazing, like it's different than working with digital medium when you kind of looking at it on the phone screen or or laptop, right, it's different feeling and there's, yeah, it's just so much energy goes into just one frame you know, and time, and money and everything.
Speaker 1:Love that I have to come and get my photo done by you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you would look great man.
Speaker 1:Well, obviously pay for it, but yeah, I'd love to come and see the whole process and maybe we'll you know, we'll bring, we'll bring a camera with us to just you know, maybe, if with your permission, get some BTS kind of show how you do it. I know you've already got videos out there as well, but I'd love to document it. Yeah, super cool.
Speaker 2:Because just so unique. Yeah, it's very unique and it's so much happening behind the scene and that's one of the reasons I like to do videos to show people what is behind that, what is because people, if they only see the scan on Instagram, or somewhere they think, oh, that's nice editing, or it's like. They have no idea. Like even photographers, they don't know what is that played, what is the technique with?
Speaker 1:the amount of overlays and filters out there these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's not it wouldn't be the same, but you would.
Speaker 1:If you saw that on Instagram you didn't know who you were, what the process is you would think, oh, that's if they put a filter on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Does that worry you with? With today's digital world, with social media everywhere and photography just becoming saturated and almost homogenized with the same thing over and over, with digital photography, you know, do you do worry about kind of where photography is going essentially in the world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the, the, the development is like it doesn't stop. It's interesting when you think of the history, because actually, photography is not, it's not that old, it is happening. You need to understand it all. 170 years, to create image with light was like magic. It was like, you know, like wow, that was amazing. And because until then they only had paintings, you know, if you want to get the image of the reality, you have to paint it, you have to engrave it or, you know, record it like that. And then there came photography. Create image with light was like wow, there was magic. And now we take it as something totally normal, like everybody's photographer.
Speaker 2:Now, yeah, 150 years ago, the early photographers were. They were scientists, like chemists, scientists. You know, they were not really, they were not nothing like a photographer, right? Yeah, and they were like inventors, yeah, and now every, we are all photographers. Everybody has a phone and everybody can record image with the light. Yeah, so it's something very common now and it's where it's going. Yeah, the AI and everything. I'm not like too much in touch with that, but it makes me even more happy that I have this technique and doing something different than electronic image, because I think the yeah, just with the development and digital photography, the value of the craft came down so much. Right, the accessibility of the technique, of the profession and the value of that is decreasing, right With how easy it is. You know, if you shoot on digital you don't care, but the image will be there. You know, yep, you like me, I'm worried, like every image, will it be there?
Speaker 2:Like will it be okay. Will it actually appear or not? With digital, you don't think about that, it's so. The accessibility of the craft is much easier and with AI will be even more. You know, I think the photography profession will slowly lose the need you know.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:A lot of clients will just type, hey, I wanna go with the sunset, with the cocktail, and AI will do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially those lifestyle kind of photography genres. Yeah, I think you know the way you describe this process. I think of NFTs being kind of the opposite end of the spectrum but linked because NFTs. You kind of got this what's non-fungible right, this is non-fungible. You can't copy that right Unless you scan it. And it's still not the original. You have one original. It's one of one, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the great thing about the tint type.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think that's that's.
Speaker 2:But what is NFT? Actually, you don't really know, because everybody tells something different. Is it like one unique digital file? Correct, yep?
Speaker 1:One unique digital file if you sell it. You don't own that anymore, so you sell it. I sell you an NFT. You have that one and only digital file of that image, so it's.
Speaker 2:At the same time, like because sometimes people say, hey, you should do NFT. But I don't really understand this. But you can do like one, or you can do like 10,000 as well, or not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can do multiple ones, but each one has its own specific you know traceable identity right. So it's not replicable. You can't replicate that one that you bought. So you know it's very. And if people are telling you to do NFTs, I agree with them because this is essentially a physical form of NFTs.
Speaker 2:You know it's one of one it is unique, it's like painting you can't swap another one for the same one.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, fascinating. How do If people want to get into this? How do they? Where would they learn? Is it just a YouTube thing? Do you offer education like workshops or anything? How can people learn if they've got? Yeah, I'd love to try this. Where do they start the?
Speaker 2:best to learn wet plate is. I would say Europe, us, australia, there's photographers who do wet plate. It's mostly hobby photographers, not everybody doing it professionally. There's not so many, but there are some really great Like usually mostly portrait photographers or some landscape people who specialize in that.
Speaker 2:But yeah you should do a workshop. It's best to do a workshop with someone experiencing that and to learn the techniques. It's a lot of physical things you know hand movements and how you work with the chemicals. Another separate thing is the mixing of the chemicals, which is like a separate job. Basically, I don't really I don't do workshops. I don't teach workshops. Sometimes people ask me but I don't want to do it at this moment or I don't even have enough chemicals for myself, you know, and so I'm not at this stage to do that. I have some talking with universities in Indonesia who are asking me also about this technique because they know about it, but it's not common and it's very rare in Indonesia to do this. It feels very hard and it's hard to source the chemicals. So maybe I will do some workshops with some art universities in the future, but yeah, basically I don't offer it now.
Speaker 1:I'm still learning myself, you know. Yeah, you just want to get your own shit.
Speaker 2:And when I have chemicals I want to do my art and everything. So but yeah, you can learn it in Europe. This technique works the best in the four season climate you know In, like the European summer 25 degrees that's good, 20 to 25, but when it's get over 25.
Speaker 1:So why doesn't it work the same? If you're in a climate controlled room in Bali, you know, if it's climate controlled, humidity and temperature is controlled.
Speaker 2:I think it technically should, but I shoot outside with the sun, so I spend a lot of the time outside as well. And then it's also the humidity. It's not just the temperature where you can use air corn OK, but it's mostly because you use a lot of alcohol and ether in the solutions.
Speaker 1:So just evaporate, and evaporating very quickly, ok.
Speaker 2:And then everything changes.
Speaker 1:So actually the problem is that the plate in the you know when you take the shot, it's not always just the development of it. It's like that time between getting the shot and getting it into the room.
Speaker 2:But it's all the other things as well. Sometimes you don't know. I don't know because I'm like, I learned it in Europe. Yeah, I got good pictures. Actually, this image I did in Europe on my first workshop and I had a Balinese girl in Prague and I had a Balinese costume there from my friend OK.
Speaker 2:So I shoot this in Prague actually, and so I was like, yeah, cool, I can do it. And then I, I buy the camera, managed to get chemicals in Indonesia and I tried to do it here and it didn't work. There was no image. Nothing appears, you know, or sometimes it would appear and just slowly disappear. I was like, what's going on? What's going on? Nobody knows, I have nobody to ask here, nobody doing it. I would be writing to guys in Europe, but they also don't really know because they. Everybody knows that in hot climate this works hard. When it's hot somewhere in Europe it's also for them it's very hard.
Speaker 2:So even in 19th century, when the beginning of photography, when photography started appearing, the Dutch government was interested in photography. I wanted to. I was sending, like early photographers to Indonesia to document their colony at that time, right, indonesia, the Dutch East Indies. So they were sending some photographers, the first of them, they failed. They they were. They would be doing it in Europe, but they would come here and they they couldn't get images here because of the climate. So this chemical processes in tropical climate just somehow much, much harder. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It must make it even more rewarding. Like I'm, I'm really happy for you, man. They're fucking cool photos.
Speaker 1:I love hearing about the process. I really now want to come and see it, so maybe we can arrange something for me to come over and watch you do it. Definitely. As we kind of near the end of the conversation, a couple more questions. One is from you know, as I mentioned to you before, we have a tradition here, a bit like another podcast I follow, but the the guest I have writes a question for the next guest without knowing who they are. I have a question here from our previous guest, stephen.
Speaker 2:Buckus.
Speaker 1:And he asks what does the word time mean to you?
Speaker 2:I don't know what does the time? Well, when I think of it, in this, in this just right now, I think about exposure time.
Speaker 1:Just exposure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the that's in wet play photography. You think a lot about time because it's it's. You have 20 minutes. It's roughly the time when you, for one, click, one exposure to create one plate.
Speaker 1:Okay, so 20 minutes is the process for one photo.
Speaker 2:Basically, yeah, like from the setting of the model, from pouring the plate, from sensitizing it, you timing all the reactions there, so you put the plate in in some time, then it's like I have to be half dry, you have to watch it. You know it's, it's very life, it's it's time with. Every morning is different than afternoon. So you're watching the reaction on the plate and then you put in a silver and then you're creating another reaction and you timing it.
Speaker 1:Every second is important yeah.
Speaker 2:Because the if you, if you sensitize, it's too long, it's over sensitized, it's not going to work. If you understand the time it's not going to work, then you take it out. You have to run to the camera to have the model ready there. Then you can't. You look at the sky, you can't. Exposure time in seconds yeah, basically. And then again the development is like when I put the developer, I slowly count in my, in my head, like one, two, I want to know how fast it's appearing, and you see, first you come the highlights, for come first the highlights coming first, and then see, okay, I see her highlight on her cheek or in the nose or something, and then you start to see the, the, the mid tones coming up, and then when the, the shadows, when the shadows start appearing, it's kind of time to to stop the development, to stop the reaction with the water, because even then it's like few more seconds, it's kind of reacting.
Speaker 1:Still going yeah.
Speaker 2:So you need to time it rightly and then fixing is kind of easy already. You just don't over fix it to to bleach it kind of the image. But but there's a, it's a lot about time.
Speaker 1:A lot about time. It's a really good question actually. Yeah, it's kind of a personal question, yeah, yeah. Final question we, we take a lucky dip out of these cards and then I'll, if you just hand it to me, choose anyone. All right, hand it to me and I'll ask you the question. Okay, question is what is your definition of luck? My definition of luck.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's definition, but but I, I, when I think of this and and my life and everything, like I find myself lucky to have found the purpose of my life. You know, like, with this technique, like it's really because I've been doing a lot, of, a lot of different things over the years and I was never really so focused on one thing. Even now, I like to, I do some other businesses, you know, I do, I, I, I, I do the project in Ache, like we have a surf camp in the jungle or I do like I build.
Speaker 2:I build villa.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I do like inter-design architecture, like traffic like kind of cool and I did, I did travel guiding, I did a lot of different yeah, I do modeling, presenting some acting soap operas, whatever, but like without the right, like detailed purpose of your life, you're just kind of floating around, yeah. And then so I feel very lucky to be able to find something that give me so much meaning and and to be so sure about what I want to do for the next many years of my life and I think it's not everybody's so lucky actually ever to find that and so it gives me like kind of anchor on my life and just kind of, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a very good thing to have. Yeah, do you have something like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean yeah photography is definitely my purpose. I mean there's nuances within that in terms of kind of what I want to do with photography, but yeah, I mean without. Without photography in my life I would be lost, for sure. And I went through those those years where kind of what am I doing? What's what's? You know what's my meaning, what am I trying to do? How am I helping people, how am I helping society? You know, kind of going through that process of finding a purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Photography came along and that was just it. You know I love doing this. Actually, I love, I love podcasting. It's becoming much more a part of my purpose. It's not about the podcast, it's more and we were talking about this before just saying, just sitting across from another person, artist, whatever you want to label them I'm just conversing, right and talking. In today's world I think that I say this all the time, people around me get bored of hearing it but the art of conversation, just being able to have those social skills and talk about something that maybe you not know about, and listening properly, and just being able to have a decent conversation for 10 minutes, let alone two hours or something, is so lost, especially with, I guess, the younger generation or the more digitized generation, because they're all just stuck on their phone, right, and we all do that to some respect. But this is certainly grown within my photography world as a bigger purpose for sure, so I think the world needs it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, thanks for saying, for having me and like be able to like talk about it. I love it because I love what I do. I can see I don't actually get to talk about it too much. Really, I love what you do.
Speaker 1:And you know, speaking of luck, I'm extremely lucky to have you here and be on the show. I hope everyone's learned something and been exposed. I mean, I knew of wet plate photography, I just didn't know about it, if you know what I mean. So I've learned a hell of a lot. So thanks for educating me, educating us, and it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show and look forward to coming to your studio to actually see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let's do a portrait and yours it's so interesting the behind the scene of that and see everything with your eyes. You will see how the image is made. Yeah, it's very interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, until then, thanks so much. Thank you, man.