Sony ILCE-7 | SEL55F18Z | ISO 100 | F/4 | 1/60s | Lighting: Kino Flos & HMIs
I took this portrait while filming a TV spot with 'real people' delivering spoken lines to camera. Like many, this woman wasn't comfortable being in front of a camera but after a couple of run-throughs of her lines and some laughs, she relaxed. At the end of the session she allowed me to take this shot with my then, shiny new stills camera. In those last few moments I was able to capture her true essence – a genuine person who is open, honest and kind.
The image looked good in color but there is a timelessness to black & white and this portrait begged to be converted. At the time, I was exploring different post-processing techniques and I'm really drawn to the aesthetic of the wet-plate collodion process. I don't have a large format camera or processing abilities to create true wet plate photos but I had found an online tutorial that allowed me to create a reasonable-looking facsimile. The result feels like it could have been taken 100 years ago and was found in your grandfather's keepsake box.