Had a great day at Pitstop Motorcycles yesterday. Last year I shot a load of digital images of the event and this year I suggested to Tony (the owner) that I set up a wetplate session. I managed to shoot three plates before the heavens opened and down came the rain. A couple of hours later it cleared up and the sun even decided to show up.
Thanks to everyone who showed keen interest in this Victorian process and thanks again to those brave enough to pose. Your plates can be picked up from Pitstop from the middle of the week sometime.
Exposures were from less than a second to two seconds but looking again at some of the plates there are a couple from later in the day that are over-exposed and have solarised. Shame as theres some really nice portraits. In future I’ll underexpose and overdevelop to compensate for any exposure problems. Mind you the sun popping up every now and again didn’t help much.
So heres a batch of 5×7 ambrotypes.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for showing us the process and taking such great pictures.
Steve
Hey Tony, would these images print the correct way around? Trying to get my head around it, but they do look great.
Hi Trish, As these are scans of the plates they can be flipped in PS and printed as digital negs at any size, then you can contact print as cyanotypes etc.
The original glass plates are usually varnished on the emulson side so the image is seen in reverse. You can spray them balck on the emulsion side thus making the resultant image the right way round. Although its unkown what the longterm effect of the paint will be on the emulsion.
I’ll show you when you visit.