David, I wish I could paint as well as you do. I think you captured the tulip very well, and I should know since I was looking at tulips last night on Brent & Becky's website.
Lola, I bet you have some really interesting memories and stories about your father's work. I still use silver nitrate, especially when I'm creating tintypes on sheets of metal or glass using collodion as the emulsion.
These are my two favorite view cameras. The larger one is for 8x10 negatives, and the smaller one is for 4x5. When you focus the image on the glass plate in back of the camera under a dark cloth, it is upside down and backwards. But after a while your brain gets used to it.
