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Mr. Harris, You are absolutely right! I never thought of that? I will stick with the good ol' Becquerrel method. After High School I will try to get into Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada were daguerreotype artist Mike Robinson teaches and study under him. I think that would be the best way to go. Let me know what you think.
RA89, the nuisance masks are not safe because they have no indicator when they are at capacity. Do not rely upon them.Quote:
Originally Posted by ra89
Yes, one could easily use cheaper metals to plate, it just a matter of convenience and occasionally tradition. Aluminum is a bit of a pain but brass works quite nicely and is cheaper than copper. Kerik uses wet-plate collodion, a very different process.Quote:
Originally Posted by william linne
One could reasonably make Daguerreotypes on glass, also, and relatively cheaply; it's quite easy to chemically plate silver onto glass (mirror makers did it for literally centuries -- a couple of 'em, anyway -- before vacuum aluminizing became practical), the extremely thin coating applied isn't too costly, and you can prepare a plate, ready to fume, in half the time it'd take you just to burnish a copper plate (though you would have to fume the plate as soon as it's silvered, since you couldn't reburnish it later without risking buffing through the silver). I've wanted to play with developing Dags with modern developers (well, "modern" like perhaps ferrous sulfate solution similar to wet plate developer, though organic developers offer the possibility of increasing the speed of the plate by a significant margin); don't know if the image silver would stay on the plate, but it apparently does with Becquerel method plates, no mercury in sight...
Donald,
On your suggestion a year or so ago I tried making Daguerreotypes on silvered glass. The results were good until the fixer, when most of the silver would peal off. Here is an example:
http://motamedi.info/temp/PeelingDag.jpg
I was able to make a few smaller plates which survived the fixer, but never made it past the gilding torch.
Of course Kerik is doing wet plates on aluminium! My goof and I do know better since he and I have talked aout the beautiful work he is doing on aluminium and I picked the one on the cover of View Camera a few issues ago. I love the way he is marryng edgy, modern images with classic processes.
That's a very cool plate Jason.
Yep, just ether and cyanide for me, no mercury! Thanks for the kind words, Ted.
Jason - Wow, that's a case where a "failure" is simply stunning!!
Thank you Joe and Kerik! I do like the peeling but like my images a bit more, well, archival...
Where on earth does a highschool kid gett he money to do all these things? I'm in the process of teaching myself wet collodion and I have to go very slow it's so expensive and time-consuming.
Ah, what I wouldn't give to have as much free time as I had in highschool.
Seriously.. I've been spending 6-8 hours a day scanning, retouching things in PS to build a decent food photography portfolio to show.. I wish I could start learning an alt- process =(