Mt. Zion Church near Aldie, VA
1/2 plate Ambrotype

This is a side view of the church.

Mt. Zion Church Cemetery
1/4 plate Ambrotype

A confederate soldiers grave in the cemetery next to the church. It was a very windy day with temps in the low 40s. I had to wait for the flag to stop moving to get this image. Exposure was about 1 second. I started to notice very small dark spots on this one and found after draining my tanks and inspecting the collodion that there were small particles floating in my silver bath and collodion. I will need to be more careful and start filtering before use. I am going to also start to decant my collodion the day before I use it.

Mt. Zion Church near Aldie, VA
A gate leading to the church
1/2 plate Ambroytype

I liked the way the sun was shining through this gate as I was walking by so I got an image of it. I was using nitric acid in my developer with theses shots and they came out nice and bright. I have noticed though if I over expose with this developer I get very metallic silvery images. If the exposure is good however they look very nice. I had to warm up my developer as the day went on. I  put my bottles in hot water before use to warm them up.

Portable Darkroom in the Field
Mt. Zion Church near Aldie, VA

A wetplate image of my portable darkroom in the field.