D.I.Y. Photography HARDCORE!

Over the last month or so, I have been working on a big project from my 19th century photographic processes and materials class. We were instructed to experiment and recreate a 19th century photographic process, and keep it as close as possible to the traditional process. We had some of our presentations today, and we've got a wide range of photographs, everything from ambrotypes, tintypes, calotypes and albumen prints. I am so glad my presentation is done and I can hand in my lab book tomorrow. So tired.... and woozy from a variety of funky chemicals.

I decided to make tintypes! Myself and my group members made a whack load
of unique, one--of-a-kind photographs on metal plates. I made the main decision to do photographs on metal plates since I figured that using glass plates (like in Daguerreotypes and Ambrotypes) and being a klutz probably wouldn't go well together. Turns out that that was a good decision, since in one day our glass varnish bottle exploded and the glass mortar and pestle fell apart in my hands. We weren't having the best luck that day.
This is a real, 19th century tintype, eg, what it's supposed to look like! Note the hand tinted rosy cheeks to make "Grandma Carmen" look less dead!

This project had us using the 19th century process as much as possible, and in our case we made our own emulsion and developer from scratch. We used a few ready-made chemicals and materials, mostly the pre-cut metal plates and commercial rapid fix. There was a fair amount of trial and error involved in this project, we have a lot of messed up plates.

Mmmmm... Developer.

I started with a colour photo I happened to have had lying around at the time, I think my final results turned out fairly well.

Yep, the tintype is reversed. Generally speaking, there was a bit of a loss in detail, the lighting effects on the wall are completely gone. Still looks awesome though, I'm quite quite happy with it.

The best part about this whole thing, it means I've only got one last assignment before I'm done for the semester! Thankfully we got an extension on this essay, since it was supposed to be due on the same day as this presentation. I probably wouldn't be alive at this point had I had to do both for today. My consumption of real food has gone down in the last few weeks with crunch time. Still eating well, but the time to cook fun or new stuff hasn't existed in a while. Starting this upcoming weekend though, back to real food and crafts! My roommate and I plan to have a Christmas dinner party before she heads back to the island for the holidays. Updates will come soon with the menu plan!