Telling the Stories of People’s Lives Through a Wet Plate Photography Project

Photography Tips

You may have heard about the resurgence in wet plate photography that has been happening lately. Many have started using this old style of photographing to change the landscape of the digital dominated world. But perhaps no one has taken on this technique with more passion than Ian Ruhter who converted an old ice-cream style truck into a large-scale wet plate camera:

Ruhter’s story is quite amazing, as are those of the people he photographs. It’s one thing to spend a year-and-a-half turning a vehicle into a giant camera, but to find the stories that Ruhter does and be able to tell them through his photography is nothing short of incredible.

This is by no means to say that you need to create a camera as large as Ruhter’s in order to capture amazing photos and stories such as he does. But it does show the power that photography can have and the magic that surrounds it in bringing people together and allowing them to tell their stories.

One of the images created by Ruhter’s truck camera