Experience the Beauty of Tintype Photography
Blake Wylie — Nashville Photographer Based in Franklin, TN
I make tintype photographs. Each one is a handmade original on metal, created using a process that dates back to the 1850s. No digital files, no copies, no negatives. Just one plate, made by hand, start to finish.
I work out of my home studio in Franklin, Tennessee, about 20 minutes south of Nashville. When you come in for a session, you see the whole thing happen. I coat the metal plate with collodion, dip it in silver nitrate, load it into the camera, make the exposure, and develop the image right there in front of you. The whole process takes a few minutes per plate, and I usually produce three or four tintypes in a session that runs about an hour and a half.
I shoot 8x10, 6.5x8.5 (whole plate), and 5x7 portraits. Most sessions happen indoors at my studio with strobes, but I also shoot in natural light and I'm available for on-location sessions around Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
How I got here
I've been taking pictures for a long time. I shot 35mm film for years, dabbled in digital for a while, but by 2009 I was feeling pretty disillusioned with digital photography. That's when I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole and discovered wet plate collodion. I started teaching myself from old forums and a hand-copied manual by John Coffer.
Before any tintype photography, though, I spent about eight years doing improv comedy in Nashville with groups like Music City Improv and Improv Nashville. That background still shows up in my portrait work in ways I didn't expect. Improv teaches you to pay attention and to read people quickly. It also teaches you to stay loose when things don't go as planned. All of that matters when you're working with a process where the chemistry has a mind of its own and every plate is a one-shot deal.
My first darkroom was black plastic sheeting stapled to a basement ceiling in Old Hickory, TN. I made my first visible tintype on March 12, 2011. It was rough, but it was enough to get me hooked.
I've been at it for about 15 years now. In that time, I've created tintypes for Jack Daniel's (the campaign won Gold and Silver at the American Advertising Awards in Nashville), set up a working darkroom in the balcony of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center during the STORY Conference, and received an Honorable Mention from the International Photography Awards in 2025. My work has been covered by PBS Tennessee Crossroads, News Channel 5, PetaPixel, and Fstoppers, among others. You can see the full list on my press page.
Why tintype still matters
There's something about handing someone a physical photograph on a metal plate that doesn't translate to a screen. People hold it and go quiet for a second. It has weight. It looks different in different light. And because there's no negative, no file, no way to make another one, it carries a kind of value that digital photos just don't have.
I'm also a technologist by day. I've spent my career working in tech, and I think that's part of why I'm drawn to this process. I know what digital can do. I use it every day. But there are things it can't do, and a tintype is one of them. The imperfections, the texture, the fact that you watched it come into existence in a tray of chemicals, those are the things that make people come back.
What's next
I'm working on learning the daguerreotype process, which predates tintypes by about 15 years. It's a different animal entirely, involving mercury vapor and polished silver plates, but I'm looking forward to adding it to what I offer. Stay tuned on that.
If you want to book a session, here's my pricing and scheduling page. If you have questions about the process, my FAQ covers the details. And if you just want to read more about tintype photography, I write regularly on my Tintype Journal.