The Reluctant Gardener
Our latest tintype.
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3 Comments:
So Cool!
This is eery and beautiful. I love it! What's involved in making pictures like this?
I'll give you the short version for now. The image is made on a plate of aluminum (in this case about 4x5 inches). First the plate is made light sensitive by placing it in a mixture of silver nitrate for a about 3 minutes. It is then placed in the back of one of those old time wooden cameras with a 100 year old lens. There are no f-stops or shutter speeds, just a lens cap that is removed to make the exposure. As I recall this image was probably about 13 seconds (you have to hold very still). The plate is then immediately taken back to the darkroom to be placed in the developer (made by mixing a bunch of different chemicals together that we may go into more detail about in a later posting). This whole process from exposure to processing must happen while the chemistry is still wet, if it dries before being processed you will come up blank. Thus on hot days you must work much faster than on cool days. Anyway, after the developer the plate is rinsed in two baths of distilled water (distilled is very important) and then put into a fixing bath to prevent the image from fading. Then you flip on the lights and let it dry on a little rack. Voila! You now have a tintype (or modernly I guess an aluminumtype). Isabel and I are hoping to post a more detailed explanation with video in the future, stay posted.
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