The metronome machinations of Takashi Arai show there are differing approaches to the process but what counts is the end result – a great plate.

A recently posted video shows the portrait and technical perfection of Eric Mertens …

It’s been 10 years since George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film has conducted public workshops on photographic processes. Reintroducing these are rare workshops using the earliest techniques of creating light-based imagery. Participants will use the same techniques and chemicals used by the original inventors and celebrate the state of photography as introduced in 1839. The workshop, titled “1839”, will feature Daguerre’s original process, Bayard’s direct positive paper process, Hercules Florence’s ammonia fixed silver-chloride prints and Talbot’s photogenic drawings, all being shot in the formal gardens at George Eastman House.

This daguerreotype component will feature the process as invented, not the improved techniques – No bromine, gold chloride or even polishing buffs here (only circular pattern polishing). Participants will make a printed-out daguerreotype and then a mercury developed out daguerreotype.

Says Mark Osterman, photographic process historian at the Eastman House:

“Its really the comparison of the three processes that makes this workshop a unique experience, few have ever seen any of these processes, let alone all of them. We’ll display the early daguerreotype equipment in the collection as well as 1839 daguerreotype plates taken in Mexico City to show how to identify the earliest examples of the process.”

1839 – July 19, 2010 through July 22, 2010 at George Eastman House.
For more information or to register, contact Stacey VanDenburgh at (585) 271-3361 ext. 323 or by e-mail at svandenburgh@geh.org.
website link : eastmanhouse.org

More images have been added to Casey’s gallery, press coverage of his show can be seen at Savannahnow.com, well done Casey!

Fast becoming cdags.org most prolific daguerreotypist, Casey has 7 new images in his gallery with the promise of more on the way. Opening soon is his first exhibit, at the Iocovozzi gallery in Savannah, Georgia,

Iocovozzi Fine Art Ltd.
1 West Jones
Savannah, Georgia 31401 USA
Tel 1: (912) 234 – 9424

A Giroux camera is going under the auction hammer this coming May at a WestLicht Photographica Auction, where a similar one sold last year for $576,000. Cdags.org member Ake Hultman sent in an image of a replica he made which looks to be a very good way of saving half a million dollars…

Five new images have been added to Casey’s gallery continuing his daguerreian documentation of life in New England.

Another exhibitor at the Héritages de Daguerre exhibition at Bry sur Marne, has his own gallery here at cdags.org.. A photographer and cinematographer from Rome, Giancarlo first became interested in daguerreotypes after reading an interview with Irving Pobboravsky in a photography magazine. Attracted by the idea of creating a photograph from raw materials, he produced his first daguerreotype in 1980 sensitizing with iodine and developing with mercury. From 1981 to 1983, Giancarlo De Noia exchanged notes and opinions on daguerreotype creation techniques with Irving Pobboravsky via written mail in that time before internet and email. He met with Irving and also Grant Romer and Ken Nelson on a fruitfull trip to Rochester NY in 1991. Giancarlo last produced a daguerreotype in 1992 and in 2008, his experiences as a daguerreotypist were reviewed in Rossano Bertolo’s degree dissertation for the University of Udine – “The Invention of the Daguerreotype: historic remarks and contemporary use”.

Six new whole plate images have been added to Binh’s gallery, marking a new direction for his daguerreotypy – that of in camera views (as opposed to his previous ones which were darkroom works).