The Tin Anniversary — Taken Literally
Tradition marks ten years of marriage in tin. It's a charming custom that leaves most people slightly stuck, because there are only so many tin objects anyone actually wants.
So here's the tin gift taken at its word: a tintype — a portrait made, quite literally, on metal.
A tintype is a photograph produced in the wet plate collodion process, poured and developed by hand onto a metal plate. The name is the gift. A handmade portrait of the two of you, on metal, for the tin anniversary — the milestone and the medium are the same thing, and nobody selling the usual anniversary fare can say that.
Ten years in, a couple has been photographed a thousand times on a thousand phones, and has almost none of it printed. This is the opposite: a single, deliberate, physical object, made in front of you and impossible to reproduce. There's no file and no negative — just one plate, luminous and strange and entirely handmade, sealed and cased to outlast every phone that's ever held a photo of them.
Sit for it yourselves, or give it. For someone else's tenth, a gift certificate hands them the commission with nothing to schedule — they arrange the sitting when they're ready.
Made by hand at my Lambertville, New Jersey studio, or on location.
The 10th Tin Tintype Anniversary — Taken Literally
