About Silver Pony Tintype

Kim Smith is a wet plate collodion photographer based in Nevada City, California, working under the name Silver Pony Tintype. Kim offers tintype and ambrotype portrait sessions and traveling portrait photography throughout California and beyond.

 

A student of John Coffer’s “Camp Tintype,” she specializes in tintype portrait and landscape photography using historic 19th-century wet plate collodion processes, working with large format cameras and hand-mixed chemistry to create handmade images that explore memory, place, and contemporary life.

 

Working primarily outdoors with a portable darkroom, Kim is drawn to the slowness and physicality of wet plate collodion. She is especially interested in the intimacy created through long exposure portraiture—the trust required to sit still, be seen, and exist in front of the camera without filters or distraction. Her work is rooted in relationships to land, memory, grief, and human connection, resulting in photographs shaped by presence, place, and connection.