Wet Plate Workshops in The Gallery of Photography

I am pleased to announce another wet plate workshop held in the Gallery of Photography, on the 8th&9th June:

This year, some of my group workshops are provided in the Gallery of Photography, in Temple Bar, Dublin. We had two workshops so far and they turned out very well. As always - lovely and very interesting people, a lot of fun and a lot of chemicals poured away. This is how I like it!.

Here is a few shots and an example of plates made during our first gathering in April (photographs by Stuart Hill)/well done everyone!/:

Wet plate imperfections (1). Silver lines.

Imperfections or better - artefacts  are so unique in the wet plate process that they are the main reason which draws photographers and artists into it.
At the beginning of the journey with wet plate they seem to be unexpected and mysterious, usually welcomed eagerly, adding a new dimension to the work. /Of course not always and not all of them , it is still the artist who decides if the 'accident' that happened adds something special to the photograph./
Some artists stay with this approach and do not seek for a perfect clean plates (not looking too far - Sally Mann could be a great example). Some are creating dirty plates on purpose, adding dust and dirt or even blood or fingertips ( so many options open!)

After a while of working with collodion each photographer realises, that even if he or she doesn't have a background or deep understanding of chemistry, the 'mystery' faults have reasons and are, to some extent, controllable. And this is when a big journey starts.
Over a time of using wet plate, photographers  learn to approach difficulties systematicly, selecting and eliminating elements that can cause the fault. The knowledge of the process is the ability to solve the problem and it is not always easy.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to source images  showing and explaining different artefacts and faults of the collodion process. All what is offered in literature is a written description and I found it difficult to recognise which description suits best to the problem I had at the time.

I started to collect the images showing different problems and would like to show a few examples of more typical faults, characteristic for collodion technique.

I would like to start with one of the simplest examples - silver lines.

Lines, bubbles, lace like or organic patterns - these marks are created when it comes to rapid and uneven coverege of the plate with silver nitrate sensitizing solution. They are more likely to happen when using a tray for sensitizing and this is the reason why it is usefull to have a special vertical tank with a dipper for this step of the process.
Sensitizing in a tray can result in this type of image:

The following plate was accidentaly droped  into a tray with silver nitrate, it slipped out from my hands, when working with darkbox on location. Splash caused bubbles and stains (centre of the image):

And one more, more subtle example - on the left bottom edge the lace like pattern shows that tray was used this time as well:

Back to lith printing

These are the results of a few recent lith printing sessions with use of medium format negatives, created with Holga camera.

It's really amazing how this process is transforming images, revealing something completely new from the photograph with each print.

I've used both colour and B&W negatives. Generally colour negatives can give good results with lith, but not all are suitable and orange mask creates difficulties and increases exposure time. It’s especially challenging with moody, misty, low contrast holga images I’ve used. 

These are the test prints of a possible bigger series of a pictorial landscapes I'd like to create. 

All images printed with Rollei Vintage Lith Developer on Fomatone MG classic paper.(first, third and fifth printed with colour neg.)

Collodion prints without a camera.

I know what some of you may think about it and I've got ambivalent feelings about this too. But it is good to experiment a little bit sometimes and check what comes out from the connection of 'the new' and 'the old'. I think it's exciting.

Recently I did some contact prints and enlargements on collodion, using transparencies.

This is a collodion contact print of a positive image printed digitally on transparency, exposed under the enralger light:

This digital (sic!) image was taken a while ago in Italian Dolomites, (while climbing ferrata Giuseppe Olivieri, Tofane). I printed it as a rather week, B&W transparency and gave it 90s exposure @ f4.5, (5 months old collodion, poor boy).

I put the transparency directly on the wet plate (printed side up), but I was lucky it came out well. I think it would be better to put it somehow with a little distance to the plate.When putting it on the plate it is quite easy to create some stains, get air bubbles between transparency and the collodion film or scratch the plate. (and this was just 4x5 print, I'd imagine it would be even more difficult with something bigger)

The second image is an example of an enlarged print, from 6x6 colour transparency, 90 s exposure, with  dodging/burning the sky :).(it is cropped, enlarged on 4x5 glass)

I must agree that once you know how the image was made you can feel cheated. Someone may say there is no 'life' in it,  it's like an image of an image. But on the other hand it opens a lot of interesting possibilities, overcoming the limits of the collodion process and allowing to use collodion expression with any image.
I'd rather concentrate here on 'technicalities' and possibilities and leave the decision, if it's right to use collodion this way, to you...

I didn't make too many tests, just wanted to check how it goes and works. I have a very limited sources of transparencies (rather don't use them) and I randomly chose an image for printing on transparency, giving it one-off try. I've made an enlargement of 6x6 digitally printed B&W transparency and it's also working.
With neither of the image I got the quality that I'm getting from the camera and taking into account some loss of the quality caused by the enlargement, I guess it would be difficult.
However, I think that a little bit more experiments with different densities and contrasts of the transparencies would allow to achieve quite nice and interesting prints.

Van Dyke Brown printing

VanDyke printing was on my list of the 19^th century ‘techniques to try’ for a long time.  While working with cyanotypes, collodion and other techniques I had most of the chemicals needed for VDB handy and the only new ingredient I had to buy was a tartaric acid (easly accessible, for example, on ebay).

VanDyke Brown process is based on iron (iron ferrous citrate) and  is one of the POP techniques, similarly like cyanotype, platinum or palladium. VanDykes have a wide tonality range compared with pl/pd prints, when printed with the right negative, but the process is cheaper and less complicated.  
As Sarah van Keuren explains in her book 'A non silver manual', Van Dykes (along with pl/pd) have self-masking characteristics - shadow areas turn reddish brown during the exposure, acting as a filter. It allows for longer exposure of hightlights without losing details in the shadows. (It doesn't happen with cyanotype)
Kallitypes (similar process, but using ferrous oxalate) and Van Dykes are often called 'the poor man's platinum prints'.

VDB Receipt:

Ferric ammonium citrate 9g
distilled water 33ml

tartaric acid 1.5g
distilled water 33ml

silver nitrate 3.8g
distilled water 33ml

/mix 3 parts together/

I processed my van dykes in water with an addition of a pinch of citric acid (5 min bath) plus ca 2min in running water, and fixed with 3% hypo fixer. Washed for 30 min after all.

I experimented a bit with different negatives, single and double coating and papers. 

The main issue stays, of course, a proper negative. In my first tries I realised it’s not easy to get a good print from original B&W negative (I think it’s easier with cyanotype) and decided to stick to digitally printed transparencies for a moment. From the papers, I had, I like the results with Fabriano Artistico the most. Double coating makes the browns stronger, but  for some  reason I prefer single coating prints. (I'm also having problems with second coating streaks visible) Didn't use any contrasting agent so far.

Scanning doesn't really make them a justice as it exagerates the structure of the paper,(I'm struggling with this for a while - not sure how to scan papers like that), but here are the first prints that I'm quite happy with:

Fabriano Artistico, 400W halogen lamp, 30min exposure (one coating)