Win A Timelessly Romantic & Totally Unique Tintype Engagement Portrait Session!

Win A Timelessly Romantic & Totally Unique Tintype Engagement Portrait Session!

I’ve always been fascinated by those old, old photographs. I’ll stare deeply in to the faces captured and often wonder who they were, and what their lives might have been like. Were they happy? Fulfilled? The mystery can have me staring into the image for an age!

You see the way those images were taken was a complex process that required the subject to stay completely still, so they always have a very unique and often mysterious quality.

So it totally goes without saying that I am very excited to let you know about a fabulous Want That Wedding competition. How would you like to win your very own tintype engagement portrait session? Yes, you and your lovely fiance could have the chance to win an incredibly unique way to commemorate your engagement. Interested? Read on…

Wild Aesthetic Photography and headpiece designer Kelly Spence collaborated to produce these wonderful images and now they are offering you a chance to win your own tin type engagement shoot!

We live in an age where we see upwards of 5000 images a day, and sometimes we can struggle to see something different, something that stopS us and forces us to keep looking.

Wet plate photography is a growing alternative photographic process which in many ways is the opposite of everything modern photography – it’s not fast, it’s not immediately reproducible, and it can’t wing its way to Instagram in seconds. It is also really hard to take a selfie with it…

The process was one of the earliest forms of photography. It dates from the 1850s and you are probably more used to seeing it in images of Victorian gentlemen & famous portraits of Native American chiefs.

When Wild Aesthetic (wedding photographer Angela Ward Brown and artist & filmmaker Bex Bennett) saw the process being used they decided to learn the craft and use this incredible old process to make portrait images with a very modern approach.

The wet plate images (more specifically tintypes) are made by pouring a collodion emulsion onto a plate of black aluminium, sensitised in silver, and exposed in a large format camera. The plate is then developed and washed, leaving a one-of-a-kind image on the metal plate.

The very physical presence of the image is something we are increasingly unused to today, and the images themselves are unlike any other – it is not a process that enables the sitter to pull their normal ‘photo face’ – it has an average exposure time of 6 seconds, forcing the sitter to remain still, so the picture you see becomes incredibly revealing, and it is not unusual for people to be taken aback by the images of themselves, or even not to really recognise themselves.

Wild Aesthetic were thrilled to team up with bridal headwear designer Kelly Spence, and MUA Antonia Krieger from Elle Au Naturel Beauty to create a one-of-a-kind shoot encompassing this highly specialist process and Kelly’s beautiful headpieces & veils.

The incredible detail of the large format camera married perfectly with Kelly’s intricate handmade designs, and it is testament to Antoina’s skill that she was able to absorb the crash course in collodion process we gave her and to understand how it affected colour in order to create these unique images. They have a timeless romantic and ethereal feel, which is a wonderful partner to Kelly’s timeless pieces.

In 2015 Wild Aesthetic will be offering tintype engagement sessions, which will include three plates, one of each person and a couples plate. One lucky reader will get to experience that for free! They really are heirloom treasures that will last generations, and are such a unique way of celebrating your engagement.

So to be entered into this competition, please leave a comment in the section below, telling us a bit more about you, your big day and why you’d like to win. Good luck!

what you will win

A tintype engagement session of 1 hour approx.

The session must be take at Wild Aesthetic’s studio in Southampton, Hampshire at a mutually convenient time in 2015.

The winner will get the session and three tintype plates (a couples shot, and a plate of each individual).

This competition closes on the 1st February, 2015.

View the Gallery