{"id":14452,"date":"2023-03-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/?p=14452"},"modified":"2023-03-30T09:06:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T07:06:53","slug":"silver-portraits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/silver-portraits\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver Portraits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n

A fascinating, ancient photographic technique, reviewed through the eyes of a contemporary photographer.<\/span><\/i><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Written by Dennis Ziliotto<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It is called Wet Plate Collodion and it is a photographic process that allows images to be produced on glass or aluminum plates.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first discovery is attributed to Englishman <\/span>Frederick Scott Arche<\/b>r around 1850. Unfortunately, Archer died in 1854, without having had time to patent his discovery, or indeed witness the success it had in the years to come!<\/span>\u2028<\/span> \"image0\"
The process was later patented by <\/span>James Ambrose Cutting<\/b> of Boston and remained in the public domain worldwide, taking the name ‘ambrotyping’.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The name comes from the word Ambrose and is derived from the Greek ‘ambrotos’, immortal.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Only a few years later, a variant of the process called ferrotype, or tintype, became popular. The only difference was the support, tin or aluminum plates were used, hence the name ferrotype.<\/span><\/p>\n

The procedure was based on collodion, which mixed with salts was spread on a glass or aluminum support. Then the glass plate was plunged into a silver nitrate solution: at this point, the plate was ready to be exposed, which took quite a long time, from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the available light.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole process had to be completed before the plate dried. After exposure, developing and fixing would take place. Finally, the plate was varnished.<\/span><\/p>\n

The manual skill and craftsmanship of this technique is at the root of its history: those who approach wet collodion know that they will have to study constantly in order to fully learn the long process.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/figure>
<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/figure>
<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/figure>
<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/figure>
<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

The chemistry, which is used most often, is prepared by the photographers themselves.\u00a0 On collodion among other things, there is an ongoing search for recipes: there are dozens of them in historical books, with different effects and consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study of light is fundamental. Every detail from the preparation of the plates, the handling of natural or artificial light, to exposure and development time calculations, requires a high degree of preparation on the part of the photographer.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is why the person who becomes a collodist becomes a true craftsman of photography.<\/span><\/p>\n

A portrait made with this technique is a unique piece of art: each photograph will never be the same as another, it is pure alchemy that makes imperfection a timeless ‘unicum’.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating, ancient photographic technique, reviewed through the eyes of a contemporary photographer. A fascinating, ancient photographic technique, reviewed through the eyes of a contemporary photographer. A fascinating, ancient photographic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":14450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[429,111,126],"tags":[112,236,113,114],"class_list":["post-14452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ed-7-en","category-photo-explained-en","category-photography","tag-schemi-luce-en","tag-simone-angarano-en","tag-trucchi-en","tag-tutorial-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artandglamour.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}