Collodion with Marta

On Sunday I met with Marta and we went through the whole wet plate process and did a few plates together.

Marta is a very talented and ambitious photographer and picked up easly all the stages of the process, having a perfect 'pour' (of collodion and developer) from the beginning to the end of the workshop.

Some backstage images:

and the results:

Marta by me:

Sunday afternoon..

..with lovely people.

Lucie

David

Jane

WPC Workshop

I am pleased to announce that I am organising a wet plate collodion workshop in Killruddery House and Gardens at the end of March. There will be a lot of hard work, and a good fun too, hope the weather will behave.

basic information:
2 days, group of 4,
chemicals, equipment, manual and lunch provided,

Brief Program

Day 1, morning

1. Introduction:
History and overview of the process, chemicals, equipment needed,
darkroom set up, organization,
Health and safety recommendations.
Care and maintenance of chemicals.
Mixing chemicals.

2. Preparation of glass plates, sanding edges and cleaning.

3. Demonstration of the complete process. (camera set up, pouring a glass
plate, sensitization, exposure, development, fixing and washing)

Day 1 afternoon, day 2

4. Practicing, practicing, practising

Making plates by student – as many as you can,
Individual guidance with the process, trouble shooting,
work with natural and artificial lightning,
work with darkbox in more remote areas of the Gardens

5. Demonstration of the varnishing technique. Varnishing.

for more information contact me at:
fabijanczykphotography@gmail.com
0860783053

Salt print.

It is not too far from albumen to salt printing (albumen is essencially a salted paper print, using albumen as binder). It is actually much easier to prepare salt solution then the eggs' whites albumen, and it's less smelly!

Same fixer and silver sensitizing solution, as for albumen, can be used - at least that's what I did.

Just mixed water, salt and gelatine (- most popular receipt, details below).

The main issue stays the proper negative. This time I've used an old, one of my first collodion portraits, accidentally overexposed - waiting  for printing test until now :)

..a lot to learn on this processes, it's just a record of the first tests..

30 min exposure, halogen lamp 400W, 4x5 WPC negative, water colour paper

Receipts:

5 grams Sodium Chloride

0.5 grams Gelatine
250 ml Distilled Water

Mix gelatine with one fourth of the water and let it bloom a bit. Heat the rest of the water and dissolve Sodium Chloride (Sea Salt) in it. Then mix the two together. Cover the paper with salt solution and leave to dry.

Sensitize with - I've used 15% silver nitrate solution in distilled water, that I've prepared for albumen first. (different sollution can be used, most typical - 12%, but 15% should result in increased contrast). Leave to dry.

Expose. Wash in water. Fix (again - same as for albumen) :

75 grams Sodium Thiosulphate anhydrous

(as I had only ST Peptahydrate I've multiplied the required amount by 1.56 =117g)

500 mL Distilled Water

1g sodium carbonate (washing soda, which you can buy or you can 'do' (like in my case) by heating baking soda) (some receipts do not include it)

Wash well - ca 30 min.

Printing Collodion Negatives - albumen & photo paper tests

All I can say, so far, is that I need to work more with negative's densities, and possibly different ways of their intensification, but I'm glad I have tried it finally.

It is working and I've got something to start with :)

First Albumen print (8x10) :

Ilford Multigrade IV rc paper, developed in Rodinal (8x10 contact print) :

albumen and photo paper together:



Ambrotype for comparison (8x10)  :

Negative (doubled exposure and development time, plus redevelopment with a few drops of silver nitrate) :

Other photo paper prints from thinner negatives (4x5) :

(some of them were printed as cyanotypes a while ago LINK1 & LINK2)