Tom Fowlks and John Hankla

Photography courtesy of  Tom Fowlks and John Hankla

John Hankla, a research associate from the Denver Musuem of Nature and Science, has been collaborating and traveling with photographer Tom Fowlks for the last three years, documenting the exciting world of paleontological field work from the inside-out.  Together they have unearthed incredible fossils and produced beautiful photographs.  Along the way, they have uncovered a wealth of detail about the true nature of field work and the personalities behind fossil discovery in contemporary paleontology. Throughout  the field season of 2017, inspired by the novel Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton, the two explored fossil sites and field camps in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas capturing many of the world's most talented paleontologists with the wet plate collodion photographic process. All plates in this series were prepared and developed in impromptu darkrooms and shot with a 4 x 5 analog camera (link to video). Digital photos from their many fossil collecting adventures  can  be found on Tom's website www.tomfowlks.com.