I never get tired of watching this happen everytime i make a new plate.
I was taking pictures of a photographer friend of mine, and at the end he asked if he could take a picture of me.
After a few failed attempts, this was my first successful wet plate picture. Taken 1/20/12.
I thought I had my gloves on
Silver nitrate is the light sensitive chemical in the process. It turns dark brown when it is exposed to light. I forgot to put my gloves on while cleaning up my chemistry.
In a world that rewards speed and quantity, why would I want to do something that is slow, labor intensive, having to handle dangerous chemicals, and can’t be downloaded off a sd or cf card?
Because:
- It’s slow, I do not want or have a need to take hundreds or thousands of pictures in a day. I’d rather take my time, compose, make sure that the image is something worth taking a picture of instead of holding my finger on the trigger and praying that I get a good picture.
- I work as a photographic printer and after developing, printing, scanning, mounting pictures for the last 20 years I need a new challenge.
- Within ten minutes of coating the plate you can see the finished image.
- My time when taking pictures is my meditation time. Everything in the world goes away when I’m taking pictures.
bryan bogater 