Hey guys. Thanks for all the responses. I own an SP445 so I’m excited about being able to develope plates in one.
The artist name is Whitney Lewis Smith http://www.whitneylewissmith.com Pretty sure she uses dry plates as she stated the exposures run around 6 minutes.
I’m super interested in how she got the viscous tortuous effect in her backgrounds. I accidentally achieved this effect developing some tmax 100 last year but haven’t been able to reproduce it.
She is a full time professional teaching alternative processes and coats her own plates. It's hard to say exactly which process she is using, but if I had to guess there are several. Some look like wet plate, some look like a sort of dry plate. I have got results similar to what she has a few times. However, most all of my exposures are 1/2 to 2 seconds. I've never had one run over 2 minutes. That suggests wet plate to me. As was said above, the length of exposure really isn't the thing here. I think I could come close to the results with just the Lane dry plates, but those have significantly fewer imperfections than what Smith is doing. Lens selection is also a part of the equation. I never use lenses no newer than 1925 for glass plates, and most of my lenses were made before the Civil War.
Below photo shot with c.1857 Derogy Petzval on Lane plate.
Kent in SD
In contento ed allegria
Notte e di vogliam passar!
Is achieving that viscous effect simply a result of coating the plate with a specific chemical? Also I’m assuming that the long exposures are simply a result of an asa of 1. Just metered a scene and my light meter only goes down to 3. Got a 4s exposure up to a minute so with reciprocity and lower light and an ASA of 1 a five minute exposure makes sense.
I’m interested in the abstract effect that chemicals from these processes impart.
IDKOriginally Posted by 1erCru
the subjects look like they were in open shade and the background was bright
i get that sort of thing all the time without
gigantic exposures like you mention, or dry/wet plates.
while it seems she coats dry plates..
you might not need to deal with glass images ... i am able to get images like that
with film + paper negatives ... its all in the lighting and blocking-up the background
by a few stops... caffenol c and print developer working together can give you the
density and slow developing you need to get that sort of effect. it says in her bio
that she not only uses the glass images, but she sometimes scans them and adjusts them in PS.
using PS makes it easier to adjust the forground levels without screwing up the blown out background.
( have fun + ) good luck !
( added later ) http://www.ultrafineonline.com/ulcotodufi.html
is extremely slow like BELOW iso 1.
i've never exposed it in camera ( only under a bright light ) it might be something ...
.. the other emulsion you might think about is on azo paper. super slow, again, below iso 1
usually found online odd sizes, old and cheep. don't forget, with paper negatives a little fog is your friend...
lastly you might also look at this>> http://thelightfarm.com/Map/DryPlate...yPlatePart.htm
super slow very easy to make ( and from what i remember if you are coating it on paper you don't need
to wash it. ) don't let the emulsions with the descriptor "dry plate" fool you,
you can coat them on anything, just like liquid light, aj-12
foma, formulite, luminous and the rest of them ...
they are just non-panchromatic s/g emulsions ( paper, plate &c ) in a bottle...
be careful if you make your own .. eyeprotection is a necessity ... and once you start making
emulsion its kind of an addiction.. now you know why nodda duma is coating plates and selling them, he
can't find a 12 step program to get him off the SGE up in his neck of the woods !
Last edited by jnantz; 15-Oct-2018 at 12:28.
This will do for 35mm. Some process (imagesetting) sheet or roll films might be close for larger format experimenting.
From what you were asking I was going to say duplicating film that has an effective ASA around 8-12 range, depending on age of film and how it was kept, but seeing the result you want to achieve, one thing for certain is that it's not an effect of low speed film and long exposure alone. It looks to be a combination effect between process and lighting technique, plus the final step into copper plate heliogravure as the display medium.
The copper plate is something new for her. She previously scanned the glass plates and printed them with a pigment printer.
It has to be the coating / process.
The latest work has some sort of weird lighting or solarization going on, or manual manipulation on the copper plate itself...but interesting take on a classic theme.
yes any film can handle this, tmax100 included. you want to expose in seconds not fractions of seconds.
and you want a slow working developer like caffenol, it won't give you insane contrast. seeing she is using glass plates
you can do this same thing by coating paper negatives as well. ( there is no difference in the emulsion ) practice
with paper and then graduate to glass. lot less $$ and effort ...
her negatives are super dense and she tweeks them in photoshop. you can practice with a small format camera
if you have ez access to a darkroom. if you have a fast lens shoot wide open. her LF lens wide open gives
her that background. if her exposures are minutes and in a studio she is shooting in dim light but still
has a handful of stops difference between the subject and background. its ez with paper because there are only a few
stops to play with. if you go to my blog you will see lots of images similar to hers.
Last edited by jnantz; 19-Oct-2018 at 17:55.
Thanks so much for this information. I didn’t know you could coat paper negatives as I’m pretty new to large format.
What type of substances can you use to coat paper or glass negatives? I’d be happy to start experimenting but wouldn’t even know which substances to even use.
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