1800s Magic: Watch Daria Come to Life in a Handmade Tintype Portrait

1/09/2025 ISO 1200 Magazine 0 Comments

I talked with Daria now for some time to create something together. Finally everything matched up and we met for a portrait at my studio. At a portrait session, you never know how it turns out. It’s a lot about chemistry and with that I don’t mean only the wet collodion chemistry.

You need to connect with your model to create something special. And this time we created a beautiful portrait of Daria. Daria is an artist as well, so check out her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ivlevartist/ and when you already there, follow also mine: https://www.instagram.com/mhaustria/

There are English subtitles available to understand what we say.

Shooting a portrait like this is such a different experience for my sitter and also for me. From the beginning we work together to capture this “one” portrait. As you saw in the video, there’s a lot of tweaking and posing magic happening behind the scenes! On my Patreon you can see a longer bhts version. I am always very particular about the catch lights, this was quite a long process to get them the way I wanted.

Working on the pose together for a much longer time then usual, makes a big difference in how important this portrait is.

I make all my chemicals by myself, I also maintain them all the time. Because of that shooting portraits is more of a feeling than a technical thing. I know how old the chemicals are and with that I trust my gut to do the exposure.

some goes for my gear, I bring them back to life and maintain them by myself. Just imagine who already sat in front of this over 150 year old lens before.

Consequently, the experience of having a portrait taken using that process is entirely distinct for my sitters.

I even had people start to cry when they saw the portrait appear in front of them.

For many people it will be hard to understand why I chose to work with that process. A digital camera is so much easier to use for sure, but it’s not the same thing for me. For me it’s so much more satisfying to create everything by myself and to be independent. A handmade portrait makes a huge difference for me and also for my sitters.