Little House On The Prairie 50 Year Cast Reunion

We attended the Little House On The Prairie 50th Anniversary Cast Reunion in Simi Valley with our Tintype Portrait Studio, Telegraph, and Magic Lantern.  This was the busiest event we have ever done.  We had Emily on the camera,  Brandon and I worked the two darkrooms, and Shannon wrangled the crowd.  Sarah worked the varnishing station.  We also had a helper to work the candle dipping station. 

Working the event

In general, we try to to do about 4 tintypes per hour.  If I'm working alone, this would be moving quite fast.  It takes about 4 minutes to create the plate, a couple minutes to take the photo and develop it, then about 15-20 minutes to dry and varnish the plate.  It's probably 45 minutes to an hour end to end, but since a few can be drying at once 4 per hour is doable, especially if you have a separate person to help with darkroom.   We were open from 10-4 for three days at this event so I expected we'd do 40-50 tintypes overall. We ended up doing over 100!

With the high volume, we had to adjust quite a bit along the way.  The first day was overwhelming,  we had already done 25 tintypes and we had turned many people away. We could tell we were going to be busy and going faster, requires more people so we had the whole family involved. We broke the work into 4 different roles.

• Wrangling the crowd - Greeting people, making appointments, 
• Darkroom - Sensitizing and developing plates up to the Fixer.
• Camera - Posing people and taking the actual photos (the quickest part)
• Varnishing - Rinsing, Drying, and Varnishing.

Wrangling the crowd.

We started out with taking appointments at our regular "4 per hour" cadence.  We quickly found that this wasn't going to work as all the slots were filled within a couple hours.  We also found that people were not showing up for their appointments and we were turning away crowds of people that had come to the booth.  Appointments were not going to be reasonable for this kind of volume. 

We ended up doing what we called "restaurant style"  Folks came up, put their name on the list, and we took them "first come first served".  Folks could see where they were on the list and see the rate they were moving.  We took names and phone numbers of all the customers so we could call them if they walked away.  This worked quite well and we were able to do over 100 portraits!!

Darkroom

Besides drying, the part of the wet plate process that takes the longest is sensitizing the plate.  The silver bath can only have one plate in it and it needs to be in there for three minutes.  Loading the plate in the carrier takes full time attention from the person in the darkroom so it totally consumes the darkroom and eats up about 5 minutes total per plate.  Going faster means two darkrooms so we had both of our darkrooms going. 

Brandon mostly worked the darkroom and did the majority of the development. 

Camera

Actually taking the photo is the quickest part of the process.  Emily worked the camera. We took photos in the shade and used some local trees as the background. 

Varnishing

This was the first event where we had to make a dedicated varnishing station.  Varnishing in the rain or in high humidity is very challenging.  The high humidity can cause a textured, bubbly varnish and the only solution I have found to prevent this is to get the plates very hot before applying the varnish.   To heat the plate, we used a large cast iron skillet.  We put a can of Sterno on one side so there was a hot side and a "cool" side of the skillet.  This worked amazingly well so we'll probably duplicate this setup at future events. 

Sarah was in charge of varnishing.  She'd take the plate from the rinse water, dry and heat it on the hot skillet, and then varnish.  

We went through multiple bottles of ShellacVarnish.  Shellac is our go-to varnish since it's easy to use and is the most historic, but I keep a bottle of Sanderac in reserve and had to break that out. 

Telegraph

We also had the telegraph at this event. It was quite popular with the kids. 

Candle Dipping

When we have someone to staff it, we bring our candle dipping setup.  It's popular with both kids and adults.  We heat up colored wax and folks can dip a candle to make whatever colors they like. 

Magic Lantern

Matt brought the Magic Lantern and set it up in the Cozy TV tent.  Most of the time it was showing episodes of the show.  Though, they took a half hour break so we could sneak in a show.  Here was the setup. 

The Storm!

We ended up needing to end early.  A thunderstorm rolled in. Tents and tables started to blow over and it was no longer safe to be outside.  In the end, it was a great event. 

Results

We had a great event with lots of happy customers. It was quite challenging working at the fast pace.  Adding all the gusts of wind and rain really added to the challenge, but it was overall a successful event. 

Hope folks enjoyed hearing about the event!

Miner's Christmas In Columbia Ca

We were able to bring our Magic Lantern Shows,  Wet Plate Photography, and Telegraph to  Columbia State Historic Park  for the "Miner's Christmas" event. 

Here was our performance area.  They said we were the first group to ever use the new building.  Matt operated the lantern,  Brandon made Tintypes, and we hoodwinked Shannon's dad  into keeping an eye on the telegraph.  We had about 600 visitors and Matt was performing non-stop. We didn't have time to take out our cameras for photos but took a couple when the crowds were gone.  

Matt  built the tripod from scratch for use with his  whole plate camera.  (The one below the screen). Though it also worked quite well for the lantern. The trunk holding the lanterns is one we use to carry our equipment.  The one on the right is a custom camera case we  built for as well.  It served well as a bench for kids to sit on to watch the show. 

The screen is just a simple piece of canvas nailed to the wall. All the windows had shutters so we could close them to keep the screen reasonably dark. 

We set the Telegraph up outside the building to draw folks into the room. We didn't have a table so we just clamped it to the rails.   The setup was a little bit odd but it did a great job attracting folks to the venue. Kids always love playing with the telegraph. "How do you backspace?"

We also set up the Tintype studio and Darkroom inside the building.  Guests got to experience a little bit of ether smell with their magic lantern show, but it made a nice opportunity to demonstrate multiple technologies at once.  Getting to operate the tintype booth inside is a great luxury. No more dust, pine needles, and wind interfering. 

Overall, it was a great event.  Keeping all three demonstrations running for the public can be challenging, but we got a lot of positive feedback from the crowd and look forward to doing it again. 

Happy Holidays to everyone from the Schnittker Family!!! 

Gold Rush Days At Columbia SHP

 We took a family vacation up to Columbia, Ca. to visit Columbia State Historic Park.  Our plan was to enjoy the town and also set up the wet plate photography darkroom to get a few photos of the many historic structures.  As this was a historic venue, and we often end up chatting with folks, we also threw the Telegraph and Magic Lantern into the car alongside the darkroom.  I thought maybe we'd get to do a Magic Lantern show at the hotel.  I let the park staff know I was coming so they wouldn't worry about the big contraption set up in the park. 

We connected with the park staff on site and they were absolutely impressed with our stuff.  They asked us to set up on the main street!  When I mentioned the telegraph and magic lantern, they asked us to bring that as well.  They put us in the "Bowling Alley" and we had the room to ourselves to demonstrate for the public. I ran the lantern, Brandon ran the tintype booth, and Emily ran the telegraph. They even made a poster and plastered us all over town. Good thing we brought our period clothes!!! (though they had loaner costumes).

This was a fun event, we'll be back!

Make Believe At Muzeo

 Matt was asked to give a Magic Lantern Show for a live event at the Muzeo Museum in Anaheim Ca. The museum is about 5 minutes from Disneyland and was hosting an event called "Make Believe at Muzeo" in collaboration with the Museum Of Make Believe.   

We made this a family event where Shannon brought her snack bag booth and Emily helped run the telegraph. 

Artwork by Geoff Mitchell. 

We had the wet plate photography studio, candle dipping and snack bags all set up outside. 

Shannon brought her snack bags to sell as well ( http://randomsacks.com ).

For the Magic Lantern Show,  I brought my primary lantern as well as a Marcy Sciopticon as backup.  Both lanterns were powered with batteries and use an LED light. Notice also the small lantern in front of the table.  This was placed by the organizers as part of the decor to fill the screen in between performances.

The show was short with a performance of "Jack And The Beanstalk" as well as several slip slides for comedy.  It was great to finally perform in front of a live audience and get real time feedback on what worked and what did not.

Overall, the event went well.  I got lots of laughs on the slip slides.  The event was live streamed.  The stream is on YouTube if interested.  I can say that watching one's own performance certainly highlights room for improvement!  

The following links will take you to the exact parts of the the show where we were involved.

• 6 Minutes : Candle Dipping
• 8 Minutes: Telegraph
• 9 Minutes: Wet Plate Photography
• 16 Minutes: Random Sacks Of Kindness (http://randomsacks.com)
  
• 2 Hours: Magic Lantern Show