Bill Hao is a photographer from Canada. Rocky Mountains on Wetplate Collodion 2025, by Canadian photographer Bill Hao, won 1st Place in Analog / Film Nature at the 2026 International Photography Awards and earned him the title of Analog / Film Photographer of the Year.

Hao built an ultra-large-format camera that takes 32 × 48-inch plates, fitted with a Goerz Red Dot Artar 47.5-inch lens, and exposes his images on huge sheets of glass using the wet-plate collodion process. Because each plate must be developed immediately after exposure, he converted a 50-seat tour bus into an off-grid mobile darkroom.

Read in Luminaries: Glass, Silver and the Disappearing Mountains

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