If you ever have your photo taken by Matthew Nixson, don’t expect him to reach into his bag and pull out the latest digital camera with all the bells and whistles. That’s not how he rolls.

Instead, Nixson will undo a couple of latches and unfurl the bellows of a Kodak camera that’s more than a hundred years old, one that can capture images on glass or thin sheets of aluminum. He’ll shoot one image of you, run the sheet through the chemicals in his portable darkroom and hand you a finished product, a tintype photograph created in a process that was invented in the 1860s.

Nixson, 40, has been an artist his entire life. He’s also a painter and silversmith, but got into photography about five years ago. He spent a year with the camera “trying to figure out how to make it work,” and has been a traveling photographer for the past four years.

“I’m going to Arkansas later this week to do some photos, and I was just in Dallas last weekend. Two weeks from now, I’ll be in San Antonio,” he said.

Nixson often sets up shop at music festivals and corporate gatherings. He’s been at Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion the last three years, and has worked at other events coordinated by Luck Presents, the organization that oversees the reunion. He’s had a presence at happenings sponsored by Southwest Airlines, the City of Waco, Magnolia and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in his home state of Arkansas. Nixson now splits him time between Waco and Fayetteville.

“I try to do an event every weekend,” he said. “Maybe a year-and-a-half ago, I had a fulltime job and I would do weekend shoots. It got to where I just couldn’t really keep up, and this started getting popular enough for me that I was able to kind of jump ship.

“Last weekend, I did a traveling event called the Oddities & Curiosities Expo. It’s taxidermy animals, skulls, things like that. It’s a really good fit for what I do.”

Nixson’s business is Holliday Tintype, named after Doc Holliday, the gambler, gunfighter and dentist who lived in Dallas for a few years in the early 1870s.

“A lot of people think of Doc Holliday when they think of the West, and the time frame for him being around is right, so I just went with that, and it worked out,” Nixson said.

Nixson was born in North Dallas, and after his father died when Nixson was a child, he and his mother moved to Northwest Arkansas. They then relocated to Texas to start a construction business, and Nixson did some classic car restoration as well.

“It got to a point where I just didn’t want to do it anymore,” he said. “Like, I’m tired of construction work, man. It’s been 15-plus years of being on my knees and crawling around in dirt, so I’m just kind of over it. But I still do things with my mom. She still has the company and there are things that I’ll help her out with.”

Nixson’s wife, Autumn, accompanies him to as many events as she can fit into her schedule as a Montessori teacher, “which is incredibly helpful for me,” he said.

“I have a tendency to ignore my own needs for the job,” he said, “but she’ll force me to take breaks, give me like an hour over the day to chill out, and she helps me keep track of people with spreadsheets and things. I wish that I could have her with me full time, but she’s very, very in love with her job, so I’ll never be able to convince her to do it, but I can always hope.”

Inked Artwork

Matthew Nixson is a tattooed individual. He has lots of them. The words “work hard” are imprinted across his knuckles. His favorite tattoo, however, is a tribute to his daughter, Frankie, who is 14.

“I have my whole chest done in this giant bold alligator,” he said, a piece he had done in 2014 by his friend Nic Lynds, who works at Electric Ave. Tattoo in Austin. The gator is green and black, with a red mouth and underbelly.

“When she was little, she had this plushy rattle, but the rattle was a little alligator and she was inseparable from that thing for like three years, and that’s kind of where the idea came from for that,” he said. “Of course now, that rattle’s long, long gone, but, yeah, I’d say that’s probably the top of my list.”