Wet Plate #3

Today I went into the canyon to shoot my third plate. I had to make a darkroom out of a cardboard box and a tarp since you have to do the whole process in a matter of minutes.

I still have a lot to learn, but it is fun. It is pretty neat to use a process that was developed at the beginning of photography.

Wet Plate #3 by Andrew Marjama, on Flickr

Hey CJ, that's quite nice! Some of the unevenness looks like it might be developer related (developer not traveling evenly across the plate) but it looks like you're doing really well with the collodion pour part of things, and that's the hard part for most folks. I love the look of the tree outlined against the blank sky in the upper right! That's the kind of contrast and feel that makes this process sing! Spectacular!
You are using the Bostick & Sullivan developer, I am guessing? (Or did you buy the UV Photographics kit? I don't remember which you opted for) The B&S developer offers you lots of leeway in development time, unlike most other developers which have about 15 or 20 seconds at most to get the job done. The B&S developer gives you a wider window of 30-60 seconds, and it is less likely to overdevelop shadows or give you areas of "developer burn" (hot spots where the developer first contacts the plate if you pour too fast/hard). I have used the UV Photographics Iron/Copper developer and find that you really have to aim for 15 seconds development or you start to see density build up on what should be blank shadow areas (which might be what you're getting in the lower left region of shaded rock).
One thing you will discover is that the developer (and collodion) can behave very differently from instance to instance as temperature and RH change. So nailing down an exact process is difficult, since one approach might be ideal when its 65F and 40% RH, but your next shoot it warms up to 80F and things can change dramatically. Its a good idea to treat your first 2 plates in a session as "test plates", hoping to nail it on the third attempt. Do you do a "test strip" plate at first to determine exposure? I do almost every time. See: https://www.lundphotographics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?display=user2#Exposure or the YouTube version of the same thing here:
Tip: you can recycle failed plates by scraping off the collodion (I use a plastic yogurt tub lid) and cleaning them thoroughly with alcohol before pouring again (Be very thorough and clean back, front and edges). They don't make good "final" plates, but I use these for experiments and for "test strip" plates. Yesterday, I cut up a recycled plate into 2.25" X 4" pieces to fit my Holga, and made tiny tintypes Holga-style! See:

lovely picture Paul