Bio

Dave Shrimpton is a portrait & people photographer who uses cameras & lenses from 1890 at his Cambridge based studio. Dave now works only in Large format film and the 1851 wet plate collodion process to capture images on film, glass & metal. Why I chose large format over other formats? For me analog offers endless possibilities because when I shoot large format I have the ability to take control of everything from the lens I squeeze into a camera with often with no shutters to the different films and substrates I use to capture the images. Also I’m inspired by the great photographers that shot analogue on large format, like Richard Avedon and George Hurrell, and the fact that they kept it pure with just great composition and mastery of light & shadow. Wet plate collodion offers me a completely different creative photographic space to work in. Using the 1894 Dallmeyer 3B Petzval lens allows me to see the world in a way that Julia Margaret Cameron would have seen it, and affords endless opportunities to create surreal and dreamlike images on glass and metal. For me it’s the joy of letting the process & even imperfections shape the finished image that creates the magic... I do have a fascination with otherworldliness, and Gothic primordial & naturalistic is my driving force! Fortunately my studio & darkroom in Cambridgeshire allows me to indulge the creation of these images. The studio is more like an old curiosity shop than a normal studio, where most models spend the first hour just looking at props and the strange objects I’ve collected. I’m very fortunate that I work with some incredible models who are looking for a fresh sideways look at the world and how their image is captured using the analogue process. Inspirations range from the 1915 work of Anna Bridgman to my friend Iva Troj Iva Troj Artist and the fantastic world she inhabits and creates.