Why the resurgence in wet-plate photography?

**MDR** · 17-Jul-2012, 23:30

Denise thanks for the link, looking at the image on your linked blog I had an epiphany as to why people prefer the wetplate to the dryplate.
Grain wetplates are grainless and very smooth the blacks and dark greys are almost like chocolate syrup. Syrup comes to mind when looking at ambrotypes, negs seem to be mostly neglected by the wetplate crowd Sally Mann is an exceptions but again her WP works looks very syrupy that's why they work with her Southern series, Syrupy language fits syrupy images.

Dominik

**dwross** · 18-Jul-2012, 08:06

Dominik,

Thanks for the lead-in! That's the beauty of silver gelatin emulsion making. It wasn't the history of photography for over a hundred years for nothing. The simplest/oldest of the dry plate recipes are almost identical to wet plate as far as grain goes. And they are only a little bit faster (about double.) When they first came out, photographers were delighted by the extra speed, but the really big deal was that they could take a bunch of ready-made plates out in the field and bring them back -- whenever -- to develop. I swim around in historical literature and I swear, except for some differences in the cadence of the language, you'd think you were reading about the digital revolution. The onion image here (http://www.thelightfarm.com/Map/DryP...latePart2a.htm) is a Whole Plate format dry plate and you can't see grain under a microscope.

But, here's the part that takes a while to get used to. We can run decades up the timeline of photography with our handmade materials. When I don't mind putting a big camera on a tripod, and image movement isn't an issue, I make "TLF#1" dry plates. But, when I want/need a faster emulsion, I go to "TLF#2" and sheet or roll film (faster => more grain, just like with commercial film) or the last few months I've been refining and getting to know a new recipe. I've been shooting ASA 100 (summer speed) ortho roll film in 120 cameras, handheld. I generally shoot at 1/125 sec. and f/8. I made the image that's on the home page with that emulsion. I call it "X2Ag" and it's very fine-grained (probably partly T-grain.) It's also a bit complex to make, and I won't be publishing the recipe until I finish site housecleaning.

Anyway, I completely agree with your assessment of the beautiful smoothness of wet collodion emulsions. You can get that with gelatin dry plates, too. But, with silver gelatin, there are many additional options. That's why it's not cut and dried to just say dry plate making is "easy." It is cut and dried to say that the creative potential is almost limitless.

d

**MDR** · 18-Jul-2012, 09:43

Diane,
Friedrich Simony a famous Austrian Alps photographer prefered the tannin dry plate to the gelatine dryplate and his arguments were similar to today's film vs digital debates. It seems the french are right the more it changes the more it stays the same

Dominik