Yup. I'm Shaun

I am the owner, and photographer, of The Black Hand Alchemy Company. I have been a photographer since I was 17.

I specialize in one-of-a-kind wet plate collodion tintype portraits and landscapes using the same unforgiving chemistry from 1851. Tintypes are an antique handmade art form using equipment and techniques more than a century old.

The name Black Hand Alchemy Co. is a nod to the early photographers who, like me, wore the stains of silver nitrate on their hands—a badge of honor in this beautifully volatile process. Using glass, brass, tin, leather, and wood, I create portraits that hold presence and weight, capturing modern souls with the timeless depth only this process can reveal.

Tintypes are produced using the historical wet plate collodion process. This process produces a positive image on a blackened metal plate. Each metal plate is hand coated in collodion, made light-sensitive with silver nitrate, inserted into a 123-year-old large format camera for exposure, developed, fixed, and finally varnished by hand.

The process requires images to be exposed and developed while they are still wet. This means that the images are seen minutes after the exposure has been made and are on the actual exposed metal plate.

The result is a one-of-a-kind relic: imperfect, immortal, and impossible to replicate. No filters. No shortcuts. Just silver, light, and time—captured forever. Each image has its own distinctive patina and rich tonal range that’s difficult to replicate with modern technology. Their tactile surface and subtle imperfections only add to their allure. Each plate is a singular, original photographic artifact—each piece is truly the only one in existence. Uniquely crafted, historically rooted, and undeniably captivating.

In a world where everything is instant, tintype photography forces you to slow down. It’s unfiltered, raw, imperfect, and real. The camera and the chemicals don’t lie. You see yourself as you are, and in a way, as you might have appeared 160 years ago.

My Other Work

My other work explores psychological discomfort through carefully staged symbolic imagery inspired by nineteenth-century Victorian spirit photography, folklore, ritual, and the natural world. Rather than depicting explicit horror, each image is constructed to exist in a moment before, or after an unknown event, inviting the viewer to question what they are witnessing.

Faces are often concealed, identities erased, and familiar objects transformed into unfamiliar forms through cloth, wax, earth, bone, flowers, and natural materials. The scenes suggest ceremonies, encounters, or narratives without ever revealing their purpose, allowing the viewer to complete the story themselves.

The intention is not to shock, but to create uncertainty - to produce the lingering sensation that something meaningful has occurred just outside the frame or just beyond understanding. Every composition is designed to encourage prolonged observation, rewarding the viewers who remain with the image long enough to discover details that challenge their assumptions. My images don't shout. They whisper. They ask you to lean in. They are meant to continue to unfold in the mind after you have walked away.