I always have been fascinated by photography.
But with the introduction of the digital camera it all became too easy, too predictable …to me.
So I forced myself to go back to the roots of real analog photography.
Not just by making the photograph itself, but by controlling the entire photographic process.

This brought me back to the middle of the 19th century, to the amazing Collodion wet plate process.
And every single day I feel challenged to refine and improve myself.


For my website please visit : www.alextimmermans.com

Alex Timmermans
Holland

"You don't take a picture, it's given to you"

donderdag 29 juli 2010

What was wrong ??

Yesterday evening we tried to solve a problem a fellow wetplate photographer had.
No matter what she tried, her plates were always fogged.
I had the same problems when I started and I can tell you : that is so frustrating!!!!
Trying to solve that problem, i made dozens of plates almost without any help and never was able to solve it.

So we tried to make several plates last night.
The best thing to do is start right from the beginning.
Flow a plate, sentisize it and directly after that, develope that plate without leaving the darkroom.
When your silverbath and developer is ok your plate should look like the right one. So it must be "totally" clear. As you can see the left plate looks muddy or fogged (although I have seen them worse !)

My plate was with my silverbath and my collodionmix.  Clear
Her plate was with my silverbath and her collodionmix.  Fogged
Quick conclusion : with her colodionmix seems to be something wrong.

We were glad we found the problem so fast. To find a solution for such a problem you need help from outside otherwise it can take days or weeks  and lots of wasted chemicals.



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