Hello everybody,
I’m Chris, I’m 28 and going back to school for my degree in photography at Winthrop University. I’ve known about Daguerreotypes for a while but I had never seen one until earlier this year when my professor brought one of his in, and a few weeks later I saw a video about how dags are made, and I knew At some point in my life I would try to make one. About a week before this semester started I learned about the Becquerel process and over about a month I started putting odds and ends together to start making my first daguerreotypes. I’ve trying over the past two weeks to get good image and have learned quite a lot even though I’ve only taken about a half dozen images, and thanks to Alan Bekhuis for the advise on not letting the plates get too hot while developing my latest image doesn’t have the milky fog I was getting before. Though today’s image is rather dark and for some reason I can only get a positive image to appear under fluorescent lighting. It was pretty bright after fixing, but shortly after drying the image became faint, and kind of looks like a day for night image, I think it may have gotten too hot while drying it, but I honestly don’t know.
Unfortunately because of my schedule and the constantly overcast weather I’ve only made a few dags and probably won’t be able to make any more until the end of the week.
I don’t have an image of my first dag after being fixed because I used hypo another class made and it was way too strong and completely dissolved the image in a few seconds. The last image was shot through plexi and that stuff just attracts dust like a magnet. I’m definitely going to re-shoot the last one this coming Friday if it’s sunny.
I’m still working on my polish though if I get good enough to make money doing this I may just buy #8 polished copper sheets since the savings in time would be worth the few extra dollars the sheet costs, and I’ll definitely have the plate professionally plated.
I look forward to any advice and critiques,
Chris
Attachments:
You must be
logged in to view attached files.