The entire experience was printed in the Members Favorite section of The Daguerreian Annual 2012 p235
For the benefit of non-members of the Society, I have included the text below:
Liam and Danny Boomker 4×5 inch Daguerreotype. July 11 2011.
Whether it’s a modern digital shot or a Daguerreotype, photographs of young children have always possessed a universal appeal. It was with this in mind that I set out to record the smiling faces of my two grandchildren on a Daguerreotype plate last summer.
I was confident that I could handle the squirming of two rambunctious children since I had the use of two high powered flash units, designed for high speed photography of sports events. More than enough light for Daguerreian portraits.
However I did not count of the unexpected skittishness of my younger grandson Liam to kick in just before the critical moment of exposure.
Liam, age 4 at the time, had been eager to participate since he always wants to do everything his older brother Danny, age 6 at that time, does and he knew Danny had been brave enough to face my Daguerreian lights last year when he had been the subject his portrait. Danny was confident and ready for his second experience under the lights, but Liam was not quite sure. A trail flash, to check the positioning of the slave trigger on the second light was all it took to set off the panic that followed.
Fortunately his mom, Amy Hurlock Boomker (p196 2001 Annual) stepped in with a maneuver often employed by determined mothers in the Daguerreian era.
A quick grasp of both his arms and Liam was temporally immobilized but still smiling broadly.
The resulting Dag, mom’s hands and all, has a charm few parents can resist.
The dag plate was not hyper-sensitized. The 9600ws was split between 2 Speedotron 105 flash heads, each positioned at 45 degree angles from the subjects, at a distance of 1.25 meters. Each head was powered by a separate 4800ws Speedotron 4803 power supply.
From my own experience, I can testify that after each flash the subjects eyes close involuntarily, but this is not recorded on the plate during the 1/250 sec flash duration. After the flash the subject sees a temporary blind spot in each eye for about 15 seconds but no long-term visual affect remains. I have not taken any flash Dags of any subjects older than myself and my wife, both about 70. However Danny was born with hypo-plastic left heart syndrome, which left him with no left ventricle. He underwent 3 open heart surgeries as an infant, and now at age 9 he has a nearly normal heart function.
