Modern Tintypes

Web Wandering Wednesday

ROBB KENDRICK TINTYPE PHOTOGRAPHY

National Geographic photographer Robb Kendrick started shooting pictures when he was 15 years old and developed that interest into a lifelong career. He has traveled to 65 countries and all seven continents. Although Kendrick uses the latest high-tech camera gear, he’s got an old-fashioned side. Kendrick cherishes shooting tintypes, a wet-plate process photographers used in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It gives his images a vintage feel and helps keep this technique alive.

Kendrick has authored, Revealing Character, a book of modern portraits of some of the men (and one woman) who work as cowboys on Texas ranches today, captured with the cumbersome historic tintype process.

While wandering the web stop at Kendrick's website and spend some time. Available on the site is a film produced by National Geographic that takes you through Kendrick's process of making a tintype. It gives you a glimpse into the past and how difficult it must have been to make those first photographic images.

Kendrick's site is well worth the time for any lover of old photographs who yearns for those days of yesteryear. I think it will bring a renewed appreciation of the past and a sigh of relief for the present.