Sunshine Tintypes
Sunshine Tintypes is the work of Raoul, a Sunshine Coast photographer based in Pomona. Using the wet-plate collodion process — the dominant photographic technology of the 1850s — Raoul creates authentic, one-of-a-kind portraits on hand-poured, silver-coated metal plates. The result is not a print, not a file — it is a physical object, luminous in natural light, archival for over a century.
An Art Before It Was a Technology
Chemistry as Medium
Wet-plate collodion predates the darkroom as we know it. A metal plate is hand-poured with gun cotton dissolved in ether, bathed in silver nitrate, and rushed to the camera while still chemically alive. The exposure must be made and the image fixed within five minutes — before the chemistry dies and the moment with it. There is no retry. There is no preview. There is only the plate, the light, and the decision.
No Two Are the Same
Every imperfection in the pour, every variation in the light, every shift in the chemistry produces an image that could not have existed any other way. The swirls, the tones, the quiet aberrations — these are not flaws. They are the fingerprint of the moment. Raoul works across traditional metal, stained glass, and pressed vinyl records, each surface lending its own character to the image it holds.
A Living Photograph
Most photographs are discovered later — pulled from a camera roll, edited on a screen, delivered as a file. A tintype is none of these things. You are present for its entire life. You watch the silver respond to light. You watch your face emerge from the chemistry. What you hold at the end is not a reproduction — it is the original, the only, the actual event.
Built to Outlast Us
A well-made tintype will survive a century without fuss. No file corruption. No format obsolescence. No cloud subscription required. The same process that preserved the faces of Civil War soldiers, gold rush prospectors and Victorian families now preserves yours — in a studio in the Noosa hinterland, by a photographer who has spent a lifetime learning how to see.
Artist Statement
“My practice is rooted in wet-plate collodion — a photographic alchemy that flourished between 1851 and the 1880s. A metal or glass plate is coated in gun cotton dissolved in ether, bathed in silver nitrate, and exposed while still wet. The image must be made and fixed within five minutes — a constraint that binds me entirely to the studio and the darkroom. I have been learning this process slowly, through portraits of friends, family and colleagues — each plate a negotiation between chemistry, light and time. Consistency is elusive, and I have come to embrace that. The challenge I set myself now is to work in sequences: multiple plates from a single sitting, images that hold together as a body of work.”
— Raoul
Recognition & Legacy
Raoul Slater does not arrive at wet-plate collodion as a hobbyist. He arrives as one of Australia's most decorated and widely respected photographers — a career spanning decades, disciplines and continents.
Before the darkroom, there was the field. Raoul spent years as a nature and wildlife photographer of international standing, his work recognised across countless categories and competitions worldwide. He was a core contributor to the landmark Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds — the definitive reference work written by his parents, Peter and Pat Slater, foundational figures in Australian natural history illustration. Raoul grew up immersed in that tradition of patient, exacting observation. It shows in everything he makes.
His commercial and artistic practice has taken him across the breadth of the photographic world — from wildlife and landscape to fine art commissions, including works created for Floating Land, one of Queensland's most celebrated environmental art events. He has entered, and won, across as many categories as the medium offers.
Now, with wet-plate collodion, he brings that same rigour and artistic lineage to a process that predates the camera roll entirely. The results speak for themselves.
In 2025, Raoul was named a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize — one of the most prestigious portrait photography awards in Australia. He was also recognised as a finalist in the Nyland Awards for his tintype work — acknowledgement from the photographic community that this ancient process, in his hands, is producing work of genuine contemporary significance.
