Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom
on AdoramaTV.
I'm Ruth Medjber and today
I'm joined again by Monika Fabijanczyk
and we're chatting about
Wet Plate Collodion photography.
Monica thank you for sticking with me.
So today you're going to be explaining
to me about the techniques involved
in Wet Plate Collodion.
OK, step one in the
darkroom would be preparation of glass.
It doesn't have to be in the darkroom to
be honest but that's step one
basically of the process.
Let's get us to a darkroom to be safe.
So you've got your glass
and then you need to prep it.
What am I doing to prep the glass?
It has to be very clean.
Okay
That's the first thing.
It has to have sanded edges
so that you won't to cut yourself,
or will not cut your gloves
when you work with chemicals.
It has to be spotless really
because if there's some grease
or some marks on the glass, in the
worst-case scenario, your lovely image
will just peel off from the glass.
Usually this happens at the very end
of the process.
So you are very happy with what
you've got and then you put it into wash
and it flows away.
Oh disaster. Okay.
So super clean glass!
Then once you've got this
and you've got your chemicals ready,
the first step is pouring the collodion,
that's the chemical,
on the glass.
It's a syrupy liquid which
sticks well to the glass and it
leaves on the surface of the glass
a very thin transparent film.
This thing is not light sensitive
so you can do it actually,
in normal light conditions.
So it's not light sensitive at all?
It is at this stage.
Okay. Right.
You just need to, you just pour
a puddle in the middle
of the glass and you
spread it nicely along all the corners
then that's ready for sensitizing.
So then the glass with the
thin layer of chemicals
goes into a silver nitrate bath.
Okay.
Silver nitrate makes the
collodion light sensitive.
So it is the silver nitrate that is
absorbing all the light then,
is that it?
Yes, it's making a chemical reaction,
the cells included in collodion
mix are becoming light-sensitive.
Cool!
And then the process
needs to be continued in red light conditions,
once the plate is in silver nitrate.
After a bath in silver nitrate,
about three minutes,
the plate is sensitized and it's ready
to be loaded to a holder which then goes
to the camera and then you can make
your exposure.
Okay. Right.
So everything needs to be prepared.
Your setting needs to be prepared
before that because in total you would
have, depending on the conditions
that you're working with,
you'd have 20 minutes
to take a shot.
If it's warmer you've got
less because the chemicals
are drying faster,
and they need to be wet in order
to achieve an image.
That makes sense as to why
they call it Wet Plate.
It's all falling into place now.
So this is now dipped in silver nitrate,
put into the holder, from that
it's still wet, you've got 20 minutes to
expose it.
Yes.
So you rush out then
to your portrait sitter.
Then what are your typical exposures?
It depends if the mix is fresh,
I would say about five seconds
with this camera and the lens is 300mm
and aperture 4.5.
Okay, five seconds at f/4.5
with fresh chemicals.
That's what I'd reckon but
I mostly shoot these portraits
with artificial light.
I use continuous light Falcon Eyes
with energy-saving bulbs and two other
lights which are like 1200 watts each.
This light would give me
probably somewhere between 10 to 15
seconds of exposure.
It's pretty long yeah exposure so
you need to get your sitter still
for this time.
So you can't have children in front of the lens?
It's tricky with children,
I've got some tricks.
Do you?
What are your tricks?
The tricks with children would be just
to get them to lean back
against the wall
and I also would use
a cup between their head and the wall,
so that they can sit still and keep it
in between their head and the wall.
That's genius!
That works well.
Okay.
It would be possible to use flash,
very powerful flash.
There are people working
with flash and collodion but I kind of
like the fact that you record for longer
and you really achieve
a different portrait
when you expose a person
for 10 seconds or 15 seconds,
in comparison to just a snapshot
which is a fraction of a second.
It's a completely different portrait to me.
Then after we have exposed it,
what happens then?
I go to the darkroom
and I have to develop the image
straight after this.
So it's just development,
it's pouring a developer on the glass.
This one is crucial basically
to the whole process and it's
a bit tricky because you need to
pour a tiny amount
of developer on the plate,
it needs to be the just right amount
to cover the plate, the whole plate,
but it's not good to pour too much
because it can wash out the image
and the silver.
So just the right amount on the plate
and you develop for about 15 seconds,
keeping the plate in rotation.
So it doesn't settle in one spot
and over-develop a certain area.
Then when you start to see
some details coming from the shadows,
that's the moment to stop and you just
stop by pouring the tap water on it.
So if you put too much developer,
or let it settle, you've ruined
the image, right?
You don't have another one of these.
I suppose, yeah.
Just have to start all over again.
You can say that that's an artistic add-on
because it doesn't have to be ruined,
it may have come out interesting.
Okay.
There is artistic flexibility.
If you're aiming to get a perfect shot
you probably would repeat it.
That's also a very magical part of the
of the process because after development
it looks like a negative,
milky negative,
and when you put it into
a fixer that's when it reveals the
final image.
So the metallics that we're seeing
reflected here is the silver nitrate.
I think you can see it a little bit more
in this guy here, which is fabulous.
He just has this glowing silver.
That's a metallic silver.
Amazing, isn't it?
I absolutely love it.
I painted the back of the image
with a black paint,
like acrylic paint.
Is it similar to what you would have done
for this one, or how's this one done?
This is a glass with black backing,
so that's how I buy it, in this form.
You could call it black glass but it's not
stained glass,
it's like four millimeter
clear glass with a black film
at the back.
Okay because I can kind
of see through it.
This is fascinating.
You must go through a lot of glass,
you have a lot of glass in your life.
It's absolutely fascinating
So after you've developed and fixed them,
would they be waterproof because
I'm looking at this and I can see
a layer of chemicals on top of it,
how watertight is that?
They are not really waterproof.
You can remove the image
if you are not happy with it
and you can reuse the glass.
So just after fixing and washing
the image it's very fragile,
the emulsion side is very fragile
and you can scratch it very easily.
I'm might put that down.
When it's dry it's much more resistant
and a very important step
of the whole process is varnishing
of this image
What you end up with
is a very good quality print
which should survive another 200 years
like the examples that we have
from the 19th century.
But if you leave the
image unvarnished
it will oxidize after
some time.
It will turn a bluish/blackish color.
The image will start to disappear.
So it's important to varnish them
and if you varnish them they
should be great and they should last.
Well there are examples out there
that are 100 or 200 years old,
I think for the longevity
of it this is brilliant.
And there is no post-processing,
that's just the print coming out.
It is what it is, there's no Photoshop.
You don't have clients asking
"Can you remove this and can you make me skinnier."
No, you are what you are,
you have to deal with it.
How old is your beautiful camera?
The camera would be about
100 years old.
It's not a 19th century camera.
It's not a Wet Plate camera.
It's the camera that was used
with more modern processes.
It works well.
Well it's 100 years old,
you've got to give it a bit of slack.
What would the difference be then from
a large format camera and you
mentioned a Wet Plate camera?
What's the main difference?
The Wet Plate camera
would have been
a little bit earlier.
You can recognize Wet Plate camera
with the holder that goes with it.
Basically, the holders for
Wet Plate would have little glass corners
or wires just like I'm using for fixing
my frame,
so it slots in and doesn't move.
They're used to hold the plate
because the idea
is that, the less the plate touches the
holder, the better.
Otherwise different impurities
from the holder can
get into the camera
while the chemical
starts to dry.
So if you've got
a holder that's got...
and I do have for this camera
but I keep it clean.
It's got a continuous support,
so I know that it was already used with
a dry plate.
Really, you want less
contact by having little metal bars
that way instead of being secured all
the way around.
So that might be a little tip
for someone who really wants to give
this a go.
Then in terms of them,
would you have any tips or anything for
maybe someone coming to your workshop
who wanted to go away and start this?
Is there anything that you'd say to them?
Maybe just have patience.
They really often get very
nervous during the workshops,
their hands would shake.
It is from excitement though.
You do every step with your hands and
it all depends on how you're going to pour
the chemicals.
I would say
it's good to try it because it gives you
a completely different look at the
photography.
You have to slow down.
It's really, really slow,
so you really have to
think in advance what do you want
to shoot because you don't have time to,
you know, if you assume
that you've
got half an hour for a single shot
and you really want to know
because here's a lot
of preparation involved.
That's a good lesson, I think, for each
photographer to just stop for
a moment and
make sure that you know.
Technique is one thing but in the end
there is just an image and it's important
to know what the image is saying.
I love that, that can be applied to
all sorts of photography.
Just slow down and
look at what you're photographing.
Thank you so much.
I feel like I've learned so much from
these chats today and I really
appreciate you coming in a chat to me.
Thank you very much.
Well that's all we have time for
in this episode,
I do hope you enjoyed the show.
If you'd like to brush up on your own
photography skills
check out the Adorama Learning Center
and if you want watch
more videos and subscribe to our channel.
Thanks and I'll see you again soon.