After spending 30-plus years practicing architecture in Dallas and Los Angeles, John Hall found the “future” of photography on a visit to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 2016. Feeling disillusioned by digital photography, and harkening back to past years in the darkroom both as an amateur and occasional professional film photographer, the re-emerging 19th century wet collodion photographic process seemed like a perfect fit. Following multiple educational workshops with wet collodion photographers such as Lisa Elmaleh, John Coffer, and Mark Osterman (and countless hours of trial and error), Rodeo Tintype was born. 

Hall, the 3rd great grandson of one of the first Daguerreotypists in Brooklyn NY, engages in a practice which leans heavily on historic precedent with a dedicated adherence to actual chemical formulas, practices and equipment used during the 19th century (with a particular focus on the 1860’s). By far, albumen printing was the most popular photographic process in the world beginning in about 1855 and lasting through the 1890’s. This was the method used exclusively by most every serious photographer of the wet collodion-era including Mathew Brady and Julia Margaret Cameron, probably the two biggest names still recognized today. Present day, Hall is one of only a handful of photographers in the United States who still practice this difficult and time-consuming process which involves shooting a wet collodion glass negative that is then printed on paper that has been hand-floated on egg whites and silver nitrate. Albumen paper has not been commercially-available for nearly 100 years.

Although Hall is no longer the bullrider of his younger days (yes, believe it or not), his love of Texas cowboy culture remains. Like Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan before him, he can most often be found “in the field” with his Jack Russell Terrier, Bowie, photographing most anything that will hold still.