This guy is awesome. Not sure if it's been posted somewhere else, but I think it's worth posting here.
https://vimeo.com/39578584
Here's a two and a half hour live shoot he did a couple weeks ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8coPV6-CdBY
Kinda makes me want to try it out, but a quick google turns up the fact that you can inadvertently create hydrocyanide gas if you're not careful.
It's been posted here before, but it's worth a repost. Pretty cool process.
It's not so bad. I taught several wet plate workshops at Penn State when I taught there. Interestingly I started because a student showed me some work he "made in the dorms" and I asked him to please bring the chem to the darkroom. I felt that using unstabilized ether without ventilation or knowledge of the chemistry wasn't wise. So we snuck it in, and after a bit they were moving the darkroom. The inspectors came and freaked at the chemistry we had, and when we proved it was tied to curriculum they wrote it into the plans for the new darkroom. They still run wet plate workshops now!
To buy some of the chem you need to log the purchase with homeland security.... If you make things official. i have heard there are other ways to start
The hardest part is getting good exposures in different substrates...glass, tin, plexi.
That's awesome. I may try making a big pinhole camera first to start things off, and turn a bathroom into a mini-darkroom. It'll be like going back to 7th grade photo lab.