World Wet Plate Day Book 2009

I'm most happy doing meaningful work. It's satisfying and rewarding for me. I've never understood how people can go to jobs they hate everyday. I know that a lot of people do that. It's both sad and wrong.

If there's anything I know, it's that I know we should do what are heart tells us to do. We should follow our passion. And we should pursue happiness and find fulfillment in our lives. Contrary to popular belief, those things have little or nothing to do with money and fame. We shouldn't settle for mediocrity or fall victim to fear or the illusion of job security.

I've been multi-tasking for the last couple of months, maybe longer. I've been living and breathing my DVD for a couple of years, but I've also been weaving other, smaller projects into my schedule. One of them is the World Wet Plate Day book.

I've had the pleasure (and I say that with sincerity and honesty) to edit and prep almost 80 Collodion images shot on May 2, 2009 from all over the world. It's very exciting! It's going to be a wonderful publication for several reasons. First, all of the proceeds are going for a great cause and it's the very first one of it's kind (every year we'll publish one). It should be ready in a couple of weeks! Please consider buying a copy.

This is a mockup of the cover (all of the way open - nothing on the spine) - it's an 8.5" x 8.5" full color, perfect bound book - almost 100 pages.

The World Wet Plate Collodion Day Book 2009

World Wet Plate Collodion Day: May 2, 2009

The World Wet Plate Collodion Day Logo Well, the date has been set - May 2, 2009 for the first World Wet Plate Collodion Day.

Mark Zimmerman suggested this idea on the forum board a few weeks ago. I think it's both a brilliant idea and a fun thing to do.

The idea is to honor a process that's given so many a new lease on creativity and generated so much excitement in photography. I'm going to try and make a couple of nice plates here in Germany on that day.

It would be great to see a publication from the work. I think it would be a nice community building thing to do, too. I'm thinking a simple Lulu (for cost) book - buy it or not kind of publication. It would be less that $25 USD to purchase it. No politics, commerce or strings attached. An annual publication from images all over the world would be so cool!