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Living quite a distance removed from the North American major population centres is a mixed blessing.  It also comes with challenges, such as accessing goods and services required for making wet plates. With that in mind I set out to design a head brace that was not only functional, but would also be light enough to not require a second mortgage in shipping costs.     Our head brace went through several versions before I was finally happy with the product. It is a head brace I have tested and use in my studio. The first realization was that if...

The Christmas Holiday season is a fabulous time of year to reflect on what is in the past, and ponder what the future might bring. For wet plate collodion photographers in the far northern hemisphere it is most likely also a time when one wishes for June and sufficient UV to be out making plates once again.  But is June really necessary?   Two days earlier it was 26°C with a UV Index of zero. Should the collodion photographer move inside the studio with modern equipment, or remain true to tradition and wait for June and workable ultra violet light?...

We’re new, and we’re having some fun. Well, we’re not really that new. The principal behind Antique Pictureology is me - Dale Wilson, and I have been working full time as a photographer for close to 30 years. I started like many others in this industry, shooting and working in a black and white darkroom for a community newspaper.  The smells of hypo and developer never leave the sensory, and the magic of watching an image mystically appear on a sheet of Ilford No.2 gloss (the only paper the newspaper would stock) leaves a lasting impression. After several years it...

In advance of getting my little online store up and running, it seems I spent more time fussing over names than anything else.  The look of the store, the products to carry, whether to charge in Canadian or US dollars, and a myriad of other considerations can all be amended with little long term implications. The name and brand, however, is quite another matter. In my last entry I gave a brief explanation of how we arrived at the “Antique Pictureology” name. Due to the background of how the name simply fell into my lap, it just felt right.   ...

It was in October, 2000 that I received a thank you letter from a young fan following a fund raising presentation in my Nova Scotia, Canada, hometown. My presentation partner, the highly respected and acclaimed landscape photographer, Daryl Benson, and I were able to raise sufficient funds that night to install new playground equipment at the elementary school. It was a letter from then six-year old Breanna that created the name for this store. She wrote: “Thank you very much for raising the money for the school. I love all the pictures you took. You are a great pictureologist!” That...