Kaprov, a professional photographer, says he took to the mid-19th century wet-plate collodion process as part of an artistic project to 'create a dialogue between the past and future'.

The secret was the wet collodion process invented in 1851 by Hertfordshire butcher's son Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857).

In the class entitled WIP 6 | Studio: Wet Plate Collodion Workshop with Nico Sepe, he decided to revert to ambrotype, a method developed in the 1850s by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer, to produce photographs using the wet plate collodion process.

Needless to say, having embraced the wet collodion process and with a clearer idea of his plan, the RNLI gave Jack its blessing for his monumental project and he headed off, almost exactly a year ago, to Southwold, in Suffolk, reasoning that in the depths of winter there was more chance of good weather on the east coast.

Often working with large-format cameras and older techniques such as the wet plate collodion process, in which the photographer exposes the Mann's editing notes on wedding portrait taken by her father: "He wasn't a very good photographer, so this picture is really just an accident.

It is called the wet collodion process and it was invented by an Englishman, Frederick Scott Archer, a butcher's son from Hertfordshire who as a young man was apprenticed to a London silversmith.

Now he is part of an international movement to restore the wet plate collodion process - the oldest form of photo graphy in the world.

collodion "I did a lot of digital and lm work and then I just stumbled across the collodion process about three years ago," said Jonathan, 41.

Complicated, cumbersome (it requires darkroom work on the spot) and potentially hazardous, the collodion process uses raw chemicals in a race against the clock.

The first practical method for astrophotography was the wet collodion process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) and first exploited for astronomy by the printing magnate Warren De La Rue (1815-1889).

"It was a very, very foul place to work, but yet they did it," says Todd Harrington, a professional photographer and modern-day practitioner of the wet-plate collodion process used by Brady.