- On this edition of "ARTEFFECTS", a photographer from Gardnerville who focuses on tintype photography.

(light music) - There's gonna be flaws in the chemistry sometimes.

There's gonna be flaws in how it flows on the plate.

You're looking at yourself through the 1800s, and it's really, really beautiful.

- [Beth] See through the lens of a landscape astrophotographer from Truckee.

(gentle music) - So the art is almost showcasing a little bit of the science that's used to create the art.

- [Beth] And meet a photographer from Reno who captured five decades of pop culture, historic events, and Beatlemania.

(jazz music) - The most important thing about wanting to become a photojournalist is you've got to have total dedication.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "ARTEFFECTS".

(whimsical instrumental music) - [Announcer] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Heidemarie Rochlin.

Meg and Dillard Myers.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Chris and Parky May.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "ARTEFFECTS".

In our featured segment, we head to Gardnerville to meet photographer, Rie Lundee.

This artist loves photographing landscapes, animals, people, and capturing the heart of the American West.

In order to capture a person's character, Lundee focuses primarily on tintype photography, by using fascinating techniques that date back to the late 1800s.

(instrumental music) - A tintype is an archival piece of photography that is handcrafted and handmade.

Every single one is a one-off and will live hundreds of years.

My name's Rielynn Lundee, and I specialize big time in 1800s tintypes.

(playful music) I'm starting from a blank metal plate, and I'm mixing my own chemicals that are all reacting together, creating a light sensitive piece of metal.

And then when I use it on my large format camera, that light is hitting that plate and exposing it.

I develop it, I fix it.

So I'm doing a big process by hand.

I'm using the same methods, the same recipes that they did back in the turn of the century as well.

I was born in South Lake Tahoe.

I grew up in the Carson Valley.

I was creative drawing on the pavement with chalk or using markers, and I loved sketching and exploring and always thinking outside of the box with something that did come natural.

Even though I had no idea in a million years, I would be stepping into the world of tintypes.

My studio is located in downtown Gardnerville, and the building I'm in is actually the historic diamond cutting school.

There's a lot of cinder block, a lot of vaulted ceilings, a lot of windows.

They really catered this building back in the day for diamond cutting education.

It's a privilege to be in a historic building, doing a historic process.

The camera I do work with most is my large format.

It's a Chamonix camera.

It's a beautiful piece, piece of artwork in itself.

It's a 10 by 10, so it can handle up to a 10 by 10 plate.

I can go down to a five by seven, even a four by five.

And the lenses that I acquire, a lot of them are time period.

So those are different in terms of the camera itself.

(playful music) The very, very first step is connecting with my subject as they come in.

Before I even put my hand on a tintype yet, I like to have some conversation, get to know somebody that's coming in, which is such a different experience for somebody in this day and age that we just not conversational anymore.

So people that come in, I want to connect with them, and I want to build that trust.

As I'm placing my subject, I'm doing a lot of lighting work.

I'm doing a lot of setup light by light by light, turning them off and on.

I have to just test the power that's coming out of them.

I get my subject all set up and I'm like, "Okay, now you get to hang out for a little bit."

And this is where I get to prep the plate.

Back in the late 1800s, they would use iron like thin sheets of iron.

I am using more or less aluminum.

(gentle music) I will take some collodion.

I describe collodion as liquid film.

The ingredients in that vary, but the recipes are from the late 1800s.

All of its components that are gonna react to the light and all of the chemistry are in that bottle.

I pour that collodion on the plate and I go corner to corner to corner and drain it off to where I almost have a skin on that plate of collodion, just a sheer sheen to get that nice, even beautiful pour on that plate is what the base of that photograph is gonna be landing on.

(ethereal music) So I get that plate ready and I take it to my dark room and I've got a tank full of silver nitrate.

I put it in that silver nitrate for a few minutes, about 3 1/2 minutes.

And that silver nitrate is reacting to the collodion and it's creating how lights, and it's having a chemical reaction to make it light sensitive.

(ethereal music) Once I hear my timer go off, I know it's done soaking, I'll head into the dark room with the door closed.

'cause I have to be careful now not to let that plate see light.

I have a plate holder for my large format camera, and I will put that plate in the plate holder in the dark room.

So when I close that up, it's light tight.

(ethereal music) I'll find focus.

My subject's eyes.

I'll make sure everything at that point is kinda lined up, and I'll swap out my viewfinder on the back of the camera for my plate holder.

So you do just a swap.

Perfect, and here we go.

I fire that flash.

Yes.

And that's what hits that plate in the moment and exposes it.

(ethereal music) I take that plate holder outta the back of the camera and take it back into the dark room and pull the plate out.

So now I have an exposed plate and I hand develop it.

You need to be pretty steady and sweep it well on that plate.

Keep it on that plate, and really oscillate it.

So there's a technique to putting developer on a plate.

'Cause you'll see every wave, every line, every hesitation mark, depending on how it's applied, which can also yield some really beautiful interpretive things.

If things kinda go wrong, so to speak, sometimes, they end up being really right in the end of the day.

You know, just looking through the lens of 1800s.

I submerge it in water to stop that development so it doesn't push the developer too far.

(playful music) Basically looks like a negative at that point.

(playful music) Second to the last step is basically fixing it, which is a highly diluted form of potassium cyanide.

And it yields just beautiful punchy blacks.

Kind of a golden tone in some of these.

It has that little antique tone that I really love.

(playful music) That's the point that I call the person over to watch, because it's magical.

It goes from a negative to a positive right in front of your eyes, and you get to see yourself emerge on the plate.

(ethereal music) The final process is varnishing.

My varnish is glorious to smell.

It's tree sap, lavender oil, and 190 proof alcohol.

The tree sap is the sheen that basically bakes on the plate.

I wave it over a flame and I heat that plate up and the alcohol evaporates off the plate.

So it leaves this beautiful lavender tree sap smell in the room too.

And that lavender oil just helps it not to crack.

(playful music) I think there's something about this that has longevity and tangibility and history that it feels an honor to be a part of in this valley that no one else is doing here.

It makes me slow down as well.

I have to slow down.

I have to be methodical.

I have to really think things through.

And it's not something that you can, you know, just on a whim, do.

And so I think I really enjoy that aspect of when someone's really moved by it and they see almost their soul in a different way in this 'cause it does bring out each human in such a different way.

I think that is something that's very alluring and kind of addictive in this process too, is pushing into that.

And I absolutely love it.

(gentle music) - To learn more, visit eyeofrie.com.

Now it's time for this week's art quiz.

According to one estimation, how many images, including tintype, print, digital, and other formats have been taken since photography was invented in the 1800s through 2023?

Is the answer A, 3.6 trillion, B, 7.5 trillion C, 12.4 trillion, or D 18.3 trillion?

Stay tuned for the answer.

(ethereal music) What do you get when you cross a volcanic hazards management scientist with professional photography?

In this case, you get Grant Kaye.

Kaye is a landscape astrophotographer based in Truckee, California, who blends his scientific background with his creativity.

As a result, he is helping to bridge the gap between science and art.

We met Kaye back in 2016 to get a glimpse into his process.

(ethereal music) - A typical day in the field for me would be packing up my truck and picking a destination and getting off the highway as soon as possible and out onto a dirt four by four road and bouncing down the road until I find a great place to camp.

And then, you know, putting my camera gear in a bag and going for a walk until I see, you know, something that inspires me.

Something that is meaningful geologically.

And, you know, then just trying to get there in time to wait for the sun and the clouds to light up and the sunset to happen, and the light to pop and things to get interesting.

(ethereal music) My name is Grant Kaye and I live in Truckee, California.

I'm a landscape photographer, a time-lapse photographer and a landscape astrophotographer, meaning that I shoot the landscape under the night sky.

(ethereal music) I've been a photographer pretty much my whole life.

I grew up in a house with the dark room that my dad built.

He was a professional photographer in Hawaii in the 1970s.

I like to create a variety of images just to keep things fresh and interesting.

My heart is always gonna be, you know, solidly in capturing the landscapes of the American West and international locations.

I really like to be out in active landscapes, finding places around the world that have interesting geologic phenomenon, erupting volcanoes, glaciers in Alaska and Iceland.

(ethereal music) Before I was a professional photographer, I had a career in Volcano Hazard management.

Specifically, I worked for the United States Geological Survey and the New Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences.

I used to study the potential risks from various volcanic eruption scenarios.

As a geologist, you're really in tune to nature and trying to, you know, unravel the riddles and the mysteries of why landscapes look the way they do.

And as a visual artist, I'm always looking for interesting elements of the landscape that we make for beautiful and compelling photographs.

I feel like my whole 20-year career as a scientist is really useful when I'm trying to, you know, examine and plan for shots in various places around the world.

(gentle music) The kinds of photography that I'm most comfortable doing are where I'm pushing the limits of the gear that I have, you know, extending exposures out into the 20 or 30-second range, trying to pick up faint starlight and, you know, galactic light from the Milky Way galaxy.

It's an art of utilizing technology to showcase nature.

For example, an eclipse sequence, you know, where I'm stacking 22 frames of a lunar eclipse over six hours with one frame taken every 10 minutes.

So the art is almost showcasing a little bit of the science that's used to create the art.

A lot of astrophotography is planning and figuring out, you know, where and when the moon and sun are gonna be and when the Milky way might come up throughout different months at each landscape.

I also do a lot of motion-controlled time lapse photography.

Motion-controlled time lapse is where you use robotic motors to move your camera during the four or six hours you're shooting a time lapse and it has a really beautiful effect of showing parallax in your shots, where you might have one element of the landscape moving past another element of the landscape because the camera's moving through the shot.

(lively music) I like to do a lot of photography of the night sky, stars.

One of my favorite things to shoot is the Milky Way galaxy over dark landscapes.

The earth is rotating every 24 hours, and if you point your camera at the North Star or Polaris, that's the point in the Northern Hemisphere that's fixed where the Earth's axis rotates around.

So if you're pointing your camera at Polaris, then all the other stars in long exposures are gonna trail.

(mysterious music) The place we live is perfect for the type of art that I like to create.

There are, you know, immeasurable, gorgeous landscapes of every variety, every ecological zone you could hope for.

Mountains, desert, lakes.

There's also not a lot of people in this part of the world, which means there's not a lot of light pollution.

Skies are dark.

It's pretty easy to drive an hour or two from Truckee where I live and have completely black skies.

Black Rock Desert is a great example of some of the darkest places in North America.

So if you really wanna see, you know, the light of our Milky Way galaxy, the way Native Americans saw it 10,000 years ago, then you can just go out into the Black Rock Desert and spend a night out there and look out into the night sky.

And with very little light pollution, you can have that same experience.

In addition to being a photographer, I'm also an educator.

I teach classes at Sierra College, at Atelier in downtown Truckee, at the Martis Camp Club and I teach at Shooting the West in Winnemucca, Nevada.

My favorite thing about teaching is when students have that aha moment when something clicks, and then I can see that they've taken that leap and they're applying what they've learned and they see there on the back of their camera screen something that they never thought they could do before.

And there's nothing better than that feeling when class is over, and I know that people are gonna go out and their photography's gonna improve.

(lively music) People have a connection with the landscape that they may not realize.

And there's so much out there, there's so many interesting characters and back roads and small towns and saloons and beautiful landscapes.

And I seek those places out in order to create art that I can share with people to spark their curiosity so that they might embark on their own journey.

And, you know, go out there and sort of see how amazing it is.

(lively music) - To learn more, visit grantkaye.com.

Now let's review this week's art quiz.

According to one estimation, how many images, including tintype, print, digital, and other formats have been taken since photography was invented in the 1800s through 2023?

Is the answer A, 3.6 trillion, B, 7.5 trillion, C, 12.4 trillion, or D, 18.3 trillion?

(lively music) And the answer is C, 12.4 trillion.

(lively music) For Ian Wright, an extraordinary photograph is all about the three Ps, patience, politeness, and perseverance.

Wright has captured historic moments in pop culture and worldwide events, and some of his photographs were not made public for decades.

We visited Wright back in 2018 at his home in Reno, where he showed us photographs of Ella Fitzgerald, Mick Jagger, the royal family, and the Beatles, just to name a few.

(jazz music) - Name is Ian Wright.

I was born in northeast of England, 1945, and I'm in my 58th year as a photojournalist.

The mentor that I had was Arthur Soko, my form teacher.

He actually put himself forward with his knowledge of photography and said, is there anybody in the class that would like me to teach them photography?

And I put my hand up and I was the only one.

It was the best decision I ever made in my whole life because he took this young 14-year-old kid and showed him all the tricks of the trade.

And I started work the last week of December of 1960, and they decided that the Northern echo in Darlington, that they were going to have a new editor who was coming in to revamp the paper.

Sir Harold Evans, who has voted the greatest editor of the last century.

He was my second mentor.

Harry said to me later in years, he said to me, you know, oh, by the way, John Lennon gave me that nickname.

He said, "Do you know, Righty?

I heard it coming."

I said, "What did you hear?"

He said, "The '60s revolution, I heard it coming."

The baby boomers had boomed.

And there were 25 million.

20 million in America, 5 million in Great Britain.

And he realized they had to have a voice.

And his first ever supplement was the teenage special.

He wanted coverage of everything that was happening in our area.

And so he was the Chronicler.

And he asked me to be the illustrator at 16.

And I got the job at that newspaper as a junior darkroom boy.

My duties were to wash the floor, make the chemicals, make the tea, file the negatives.

Literally, I was a runner.

I'd go with senior photographers on assignments and run back with the plates and develop them and print them.

So and so.

That's how it all began.

All the other photographers that Harry had acquired, inherited as the Northern Echo were all World War II age.

They had no idea who the Beatles were.

And so he said, "Do you wanna do it?"

And I always put my hand up, you know, I always never put my hand down.

I always say, yes.

He said that, "I can't give you any extra money, can't give you any overtime.

We won't get any time off, and you can't have any expenses.

Do you still want to do it?"

Yes.

(laughs) So that was how I started.

But the thing was, I was far too young to drive, so I had to go on my bike.

You know, and I had a huge plate camera, and inside the bag, it weighed probably about 35 pounds.

And inside of there were 14 plates, glass negatives.

That's what I had to carry.

(lively music) And also inside of the bag was a flash.

It was as big as a Bentley headlight.

So I had to strap that all to the frame of my bike.

And I was out in all weathers photographing this revolution, the '60s revolution.

We were there at the beginning, my first ever portrait for the teenage special, I went and photographed Ms. Ella Fitzgerald.

Over the years, I've just been so lucky with the assignments I've been given.

I went and photographed every celebrity.

I've done them all.

(jazz music) I learn, never be in awe of any of them, because they're looking at you as a professional and they expect you to be professional.

And if you are, they will sit down, buy a drink, and they'll talk your hind legs off because they love it.

But if you go in with an LP cover and say, "Oh, could I have your autograph, please?

I think your last LP was absolutely fantastic."

You've had it, you've lost them.

(lively music) So I met the Beatles for the first time, February the 9th, 1963.

There couldn't have been more than 200 people in that theater that night.

It was the snow storm in Sunderland County, Durham, England.

I heard this sound.

It went (hums "Love Me Do").

Boom.

♪ Love, love me do ♪ You know I love you So I pulled everything off the bike, ran round the front into the auditorium, took this picture, and that was the beginning of the revolution.

And according to the National Portrait Gallery in London, the picture I took of them on stage is the earliest known photograph of the Beatles Live on stage.

(bright music) Many of the Beatles pictures I have never saw the light of day because they weren't famous, which is quite remarkable.

I had a whole series of photographs, portraits of them, their reactions backstage, the night that JFK was assassinated.

Again, the only photographer there, November 22nd, 1963.

Not one of those photographs ever saw the light of day until they were published in my book, which came out in 2008.

In all of those assignments for whatever you wanna to call them.

I never went to work.

I never worked a day in my life.

(lively music) For me, it was just an absolute passion.

I look upon the fact that my still photographs are a historical record of things that happened during all of those decades that I worked.

I never saw it as art.

I saw it as a craft.

I saw it as a profession.

And I realized what you had to do to beat all the others.

Sometimes, there's 20 other photographers there.

You had to get something different.

It was all about decision making.

It was all about being imaginative.

I never went out as say, a graphic art photographer would do and go out and create something like a Picasso would.

I never did that.

I was a boots on the ground photographer and always have been.

I wouldn't have changed anything for a golden cow.

No, never.

I enjoyed every minute of it, and I still am.

(lively music) - And that wraps it up for this edition of "ARTEFFECTS.." If you want to watch new "ARTEFFECTS" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel, and don't forget to keep visiting PBSreno.org to watch complete episodes of "ARTEFFECTS."

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan.

Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Heidemarie Rochlin.

Meg and Dillard Myers.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Chris and Parky May.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

(jazz music)