Wet Plate Photography

 I've been interested in photography since I was a teenager in highschool and started developing my own film and prints. Being able to manage the process myself freed me from the dependency and cost of commercial processing. There remained the matter of buying film and paper ... so I was still tied to the local photographic supply store.

Recently, and what feels like a lifetime later, I've discovered the historic process of wet plate photography and freed myself from photo labs and photographic supply stores all together

The wet-plate photographic process originates in 1851 and largely replaced the
previous Daguerreotype process which relied on mercury vapor to develop the plates. 

The most common wet plate process, ferrotype, involves coating a black metal plate with a film of collodion in which bromide and/or iodine compounds are added. Its then placed in a bath of silver nitrate where it develops light sensitive silver halides. 

While the plate is still damp it is placed in a camera, exposed to the view through the lens and then developed before the plate has dried. Once developed, the image is fixed with a "hypo" solution to remove any remaining light sensitive compounds and finally dried and coated with a varnish to protect the layer of metallic silver which forms the image.

Unlike the more modern film negatives, this process results in a positive image made up of bright metallic silver deposites on a black background. The lightest part of the original image producing the largest deposits of silver on the plate while dark areas remain black as the surface of the plate.

 

 

Originally tin plates would have been used which were coated with Japanning (A black lacquer containing asphaltum) but now most photographers will use trophy aluminium, plates coated with a black film which can be laser etched. They serve perfectly for wet plate photography and are of a very consistent quality. 

The resulting photograph is unique to the wet plate process. The emulsion is only sensitive to UV light, blue ... and to a small extent green light.

In addition to recording light differently to modern black and white film, the image is reversed from left to right. Your face will appear the same way you view it in a mirror.