Portraits for the Moments Worth Keeping

Handmade wet plate tintypes for anniversaries, milestone birthdays, and the celebrations you'll want to hold onto.

Some occasions deserve more than another dinner, or a gift that's forgotten by spring. A wedding anniversary. A milestone birthday. A retirement, a reunion, a day a family will tell stories about for years. For these, I make tintypes — photographs poured and finished by hand in the 1850s wet plate process, each one a single object of silver on metal or glass. No file. No reprint. One photograph, made to be handed down.

The occasion is half the gift

Every milestone carries its own weight — and a few of them line up with this craft almost too perfectly.

The tenth — the tin anniversary. Ten years is traditionally marked in tin. A tintype is made on metal. The gift and the milestone are, quite literally, the same thing.

The twenty-fifth — the silver anniversary. A wet plate image is silver, coaxed out of the plate by hand as it develops. A silver photograph for a silver year — there isn't a more fitting way to mark twenty-five.

The fiftieth — the golden anniversary. Fifty years is a whole story. A plate outlasts the celebration, and everyone at it.

Milestone birthdays. Fifty, sixty, seventy — or any year worth stopping for. A portrait of someone exactly as they are in this chapter of their life, made to still be looked at long after.

Retirements, reunions, and family gatherings. The days you'll wish you'd photographed properly. Made once, by hand, and kept for generations.

Why a tintype, and not a photograph you could take yourself

A tintype isn't a print you order more of later. It's a physical object, made in front of you, and there is only ever one.

Made entirely by hand, in a process older than most of the buildings in town.
One of one — no negative, no file, nothing to reproduce it from.
Built to last. Sealed and cased, a plate endures for generations; antique tintypes are still sharp a century and a half on. Made with real Silver - not a paper dye which will fade over time.
Unmistakably itself — luminous, timeless, and nothing like what a phone or a modern camera makes.

A gift — or a sitting for yourself

Many of these portraits are given. If you're marking someone else's milestone — a parents' anniversary, a father's big birthday — a gift certificate lets you give the commission and let them arrange their own sitting, with nothing to schedule and nothing to guess. And if the occasion is your own, come and mark it in a way you'll never do the ordinary way again.

Made by hand, in Lambertville or at your special location

I'm Daniel Leocadi of Handmade Images — a photographer for twenty years, working in wet and dry plate collodion for fourteen, from my studio and gallery in Lambertville, New Jersey. Every plate I make is made by hand, and made to last.

Step into the world of 19th-century photography and walk away with a portrait that will last for generations. Each wet plate collodion session is a one-of-a-kind experience, where your image is hand-crafted on glass or metal using the same process mastered by photographers over 175 years ago. Availability is limited — secure your place today. Serving clients from New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia and the surrounding areas

Before your session, take a few minutes to discover how wet plate photography sees the world differently. The Art of the Wet Plate Portrait Guide covers what colors work best, how skin, eyes and hair translate on the plate, what textures and details photograph beautifully, and how to bring something personal into your portrait. It’s a quick read that can make a real difference to the final image.

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