My first Ambrotype

[Calamity Jane]

After spending a small fortune to stock up on chemicals and rearranging the darkroom ("fume chamber"), I finally started doing some wet plate work. My first 3 tintypes were "a learning experience" but my next attempt, an ambrotype, came out not bad.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/calamityjanecanary/WPA01b.jpg

I need lots of practice but I think it's off to a good start!

"Photography from scratch" has a certain unique appeal to it - no factory made chemicals or compounds - everything cooked up in your own darkroom :-)

[Tracy Storer]

Congratulations,
I've been very curious about wetplate for some time, and will hopefully have the opportunity to explore it soon.
Be careful, have fun, and make more!

[Harold_4074]

Very nice--your picture looks like it would fit in perfectly with some old snapshots that I have (origin unknown) of dusty streets, picket fences, and the like, dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A bit mysterious, as if they were relics of someone's first experiments with a camera, and you have to wonder what other photographs followed.

Incidentally, have you considered a "plate whirler" for coating? I think that I have seen reference to them in connection with historical ambrotypes and such, but not recently. Spin coating is great for uniformity and reproducibility, but not so good on economy, compared to hand coating.

Good luck, and I hope you post some of the follow-on images someplace where I can see them.

[Joe VanCleave]

This reminds me that just last Sunday, the CBS Morning Show had a piece about a NYC-based Dueggerotypist (sp), although I can't recall his name now. They showed a clip of him polishing the plate, dusting it clean, and setting up a shot on the streets of NYC, and the resulting image from f/11 at 3 minutes, as I recall.

I hope to see more of your work.

[Donald Qualls]

If not for the power pole and architectural details of the house, that could easily have been exposed in the 1860s. Nice job! A few dozen more and you'll get the coatings smoother, fewer snags and holes, and so forth, but you're definitely on the right path...

[Chris Duckworth]

Your highlights look very clean. What fixer are you using?

[Calamity Jane]

I am using sodium thiosulphate, John Coffer's formula.

[Donald Qualls]

Chris, fixer cleans up the shadows on an ambrotype -- it's a direct positive, with developed silver scattering light to form the light areas, and clear glass revealing the black backing (traditionally, velvet) in the shadow areas.

[Chris Duckworth]

I’ve poduced many ambrotypes. Actually, it is a negative image—you can make a positive print from one quite easily—that appears positive when backed by a dark substance (paper, cloth, paint, dark glass, or, in the case of a tintype, sheet iron painted black) and viewed by reflective light. To make the ambro’s highlights a better white, nineteenth-century photographers frequently underexposed the plate and also used potassium cyanide as a fixer. Works great, but you obviously need to be careful with the cyanide, especially around acids. That’s why I asked.

I also used commercial gelatine dry plates (lantern slide mainly), but encountered problems. Even with an underexposed negative, the highlights did not stand out. In part, I think, this was because the image, especially when fixed with thiosulfate, was too black. You could solve this with a ferricyanide bleach, but, of course, the image would fade. I also played around with a lead toner, but it was more bother than it was worth. I more or less lost interest and decided that, if I wanted to make an ambro, I’d just use the historical process.

You can find some good information at: http://www.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem&Art/Topics/Photography/photo_processes.pdf
and more detailed discussions in William Crawford’s “Keepers of the Light.“ Of course, any number of nineteenth-century handbooks provide detailed descriptions.

[Calamity Jane]

Chris,

I am a very "tactile" person and really get into what I am doing. When I paint, I get covered with paint.

I decided that any form of cyanide was NOT a good idea for me ;-)

[Chris Duckworth]

Jane,

Thiosulfate is an excellent choice! One of the problems in following old recipes too closely is the danger inherent in many of them. I also played around with daguerreotypes in the 1960s and ‘70s and was amazed at people using replicas of nineteenth-century equipment. Suck in the mercury fumes and feel your brain go away. Modern fume hoods and protective gear are the only way to go.

Anyway, your image is nice, and I hope you’ll post future efforts.