In case you haven't seen this week's gorgeous cover art—a portrait of Tom Skerritt, Patron Saint of SIFF and Seattle's Only Celebrity™, by artist Daniel Carrillo—have a look here:

Carrillo captured the image for us last Wednesday. Here's how:

The process is called wet collodion, discovered around 1848, and it is the same process that was used to make tintypes. Positives on clear glass are called ambrotypes. The image of Tom is an ambrotype and the exposure was f/4.5 for 10 seconds using studio lights. I used use a head brace to ensure a relatively sharp image.

Neat! I couldn't be more thrilled with this cover. You can see more of Carrillo's work here and here.

In related news, THE SIFF GUIDE IS OUT. OH MY GOD, THE SIFF GUIDE IS OUT.

The festival opens tomorrow, and you can follow all of our constantly updated coverage—reviews, showtimes, interviews, recommendations, gossip—here. Here is my heartfelt intro. And if you don't know what you're looking for and just want to browse, you can peruse our take every single fucking thing in the festival right here.

I'll be yelling at you guys about SIFF almost constantly for the next month, so get used to it. Happy SIFF! Huzzah!