First Successful-ish Daguerreotype and Questions (Becquerel)

[fragomeni]

First, I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to this forum over the years. I’ve just recently begun my daguerreotype journey and the wealth of information shared in this forum has been incredibly helpful as questions have come up.

Attached is my first [relatively] successful Becquerel daguerreotpye. It took probably around 15 trials to get thing to come together to produce this image but I’m excited to now be on my way. The experience thus far has raised a few questions in my mind that I haven’t found completely answered so I’d like to raise them here and would appreciate any wisdom and insight that you can share.

1. Plate Cleaning: The biggest challenge I’m facing at this point is getting my plates chemically clean before sensitizing. It’s really amazing how readily the plate surface can pick up oils and debris that can effect the sensitized layer and cause anomalies in the image. I’ve even found that the plate can somehow pick up fingerprints even through my nitrile gloves. My process is to do a final polish to the plate and then wash it in denatured alcohol with a cotton ball followed by a thorough wash in filtered hot water with dish detergent (also using a cotton ball). Thats then followed by a rinse in distilled water. I was wiping it dry with a soft cloth but have recently tried blow drying it with hot air after the distilled water. However, even with all of this and making sure to not touch the surface even with gloved fingers, I’m still seeing artifacts in the exposed image that I can see are from the plate still not being totally clean. What are your methods for getting your plates totally clean immediately prior to sensitizing in order to get even sensitization without anomalies?

2. Judging development through the development glass/ rubylith/ amberlith: I think I’m getting a handle on this now but what are you looking for when viewing the image through the development glass/material to determine when is the right time to stop development and move to fixing? I’m basically letting it go until I start to notice weird things start to appear and when it seems that the lower highlights may be beginning to start losing tone. Do you have any insight on anything to look for to determine optimal development?

3. Judging gilding: This is another that I think I’m finally getting but I’m curious about what others look for. I’ve found that during gilding, plates sometimes undergo rather pronounced changes while other times they don’t. I’m mainly watching for color change in the highest highlights and watching that change follow into the lower highlights watching for a kind of blending of those tones but not allowing it to go too far because I find that at a certain point, over-gilding will cause silver in the highlights to seemingly flake off or dissolve leaving holes and destroying the image. Are there specific things that you’re looking for to determine when gilding is complete/optimal?

Thanks again for any help that you can offer. Happy to be a part of this community as I get deep into daguerreotypy.

-Francesco Fragomeni
http://www.francescofragomeni.com

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[botticelli1972]

Welcome to the club.
First question cleaning plates. Use accelerant free gloves, N-Dex brand, the regular nitrile gloves have sulfur in them. I simply polish and wipe with acetone, that gets rid of the fats used in the manufacture of polishing compounds. Don’t over think it. Remember to wipe edges of plates.

A properly exposed B-dag will show the brightest highlight already starting to show when first put under rubylith. The light coming in the lens has red wavelengths in it that will start the print out process. For an experiment do a several hour exposure, you sill see lots of this effect and it makes neat images. My best development ever was placing rubylith covered plate holder in a north facing window in my house and going off to work, comeback and it was perfect!

Gilding not required on B-dags, rarely does it improve them, more often ruins, but does make them much tougher. Never pour solution on dry plate it will stain, keep plate in low pyrex with just a little water over the surface. I make my gold solution a bit stronger to compensate for the water and pour not on plate but next to and allow to mix with the water. Heat just speeds up reaction, you can do a “cold Gilding” by leaving it alone and watching, Ive done it over several days or a few hours, flood with water when it looks good. If you are in a hurry you can put in the microwave, as long as metal is fully submerged it will not spark! Watch carefully for steam, pull out immediately then let sit till you are happy. If bubbles form on the surface it will usually not result in a good image.

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