So yesterday I had my brother visiting me at my place. Perfect timing as I had in mind shooting some plates that day and now I had the perfect model to go with it. It was the first time he got to see the process real time and he loved it from the start.
Plate 1
Set-Up: 2 pilot lights of studio flash as I did with the photos before. Same position etc. Model 30 cm away from the camera and as an additional light a construction lamp of 25oW right in the middle before the model. Exposure time: 20 seconds. Fix: Sodium Thiosulfate (hypo) 200gr to 1 liter. Result: way too dark, only white parts of the eyes were visible and only minor.
Plate 2
Set-Up: 2 pilot lights of studio flash as I did with the photos before. Same position etc. Model 30 cm away from the camera and as an additional light a construction lamp of 25oW right in the middle before the model. Exposure time: 40 seconds. Fix: Sodium Thiosulfate (hypo) 200gr to 1 liter. Result: still too dark, more contours visible but not usable.
Plate 3
Set-Up: 2 pilot lights of studio flash as I did with the photos before. Same position etc. Model 30 cm away from the camera and as an additional light a construction lamp of 25oW right in the middle before the model. Exposure time: 55 seconds. Fix: Sodium Thiosulfate (hypo) 200gr to 1 liter. Result: now there was coming up quite an image but still too much on the dark side. He has a much more darker skin than Bart did even though he’s not all that coloured but comes with foreign blood.
Plate 4
Set-Up: 2 pilot lights of studio flash as I did with the photos before. Same position etc. Model 30 cm away from the camera and as an additional light 2 UV tl-lights in the middle before the model, a little bit raised in a way he got a bit of light from above. Exposure time: 25 seconds. Fix: Sodium Thiosulfate (hypo) 200gr to 1 liter. Result: very very pleasing! The light was very beautiful, it lit out his face very well, his underlip etc. Qua sharpness really nice and contrast..I loved it! A very stunning end result as that was the least I expected when first using these UV lights. They obviously worked very well, cutting down exposure time by half. The light is much nicer to the model’s eyes so definitely a go for next time!
AfterThoughts
I used 200 grams of Sodium Thiosulfate instead of 300 grams I did last time for fixing. However, I do prefer the latter as it provides you with a less warm color. For me this is a bit too reddish.
Also very pleased to see the silver is doing fine. I just filtered it before using and it worked perfectly. Just made sure the plates were cleaned better than last time and that certainly helped with creating nicer plates.
Going to clean the darkroom tonight and varnish the plates. I really want this one to last as I would like to use it in the “Up Close” project. Off to work now!
Photography Contrastique - Alternative Photographic Processes 