I used Flickr to look up images of a a type of photography which I have a slightly obsessive crush on.
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William Edward Kilburn (1819-1891); Ambrotype Collection of National Media Museum |
Wanna know more about ambrotypes and why I love them? More after the jump....
Ambrtoypes are glass photographs produced from about the 1850's onwards. They were produced via the Wet Collodian Process and were usually quite small and were housed in beautiful brass, cloth or leather cases. In many cases the plates were touched up with a little pink on the cheeks, or jewelery was gilded.
What I love about Ambrotypes is that the process resulted in a positive photograph, and due to the bleaching of the silver the white/light parts of the image are the reflective silver, where as the black is the black velvet backing of the case or the black varnish applied to the plate. They have an amazingly high grain, so the images are beautifully crisp and I love the high contrast that can be achieved. Ambrotypes are also not as vulnerable to environmental damage as paper photos, and many of them seem eerily new due to their condition and that most people are used to 'old' photographs (paper prints) being blurry.
More info can be found here or if you would like to see one in real life, let me know, as I have a small collection of my own. *swoon*
That picture is spooky, the baby has a very odd look on it's face. It is very clear and crisp though. Counted 3 typo's, that's more my speed than yours!
ReplyDeleteOoops, fixed the typos... serves me right for not proof reading.
ReplyDeleteThe plates took a while to develop so the baby probably doesn't look happy because the mother was most likely holding its head still.
Due to cost, lot of photos were only ever taken after people had died as funeral portraits. They are even more sad and creepy, but at least they stayed still!