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03/15/2013 04:13:35 PM · #1 |
A friend of mine found a stack of glass plate negatives in a drawer of an old desk that belonged to her grandfather. She gave them to me to see what I could figure out about them. You can see one of the negatives here:
The plates are 3.25 by 5.25 inches. The edges are rough; they look like they were cut by someone who was not very good at cutting glass. I photographed them on a light table with my DSLR. Then I inverted them, converted them to monochrome, and adjusted brightness and contrast. Here is the result:
You can see the complete set of images on my web site.
These don't look like the work of a professional photographer. When would an amateur have been shooting with glass negatives? Does the size give any clues to the equipment he was using?
Can anyone identify the time by the clothes they were wearing or other details in the pictures?
The negatives are filthy. Is there something safe I can do to clean them?
Do you know of a commercial service that would clean them and scan them properly?
Thanks for any help you can give.
~~DanW
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03/15/2013 04:26:53 PM · #2 |
I think until George Eastman figured out how to put a stable photographic emulsion on a strip of sprocketed celluloid everyone shot on glass plates, often using a liquid emulsion applied right at the time the photo was taken (wet-plate photography).  Bear_Music should be along shortly to correct me with actual knowledge ... :-)
They are cool. A local history museum might be interested, and you could make a great photo book if you can get some biographical background ... |
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03/15/2013 04:47:45 PM · #3 |
Look HERE for a good start on conserving glass plates.
These look like dry glass plates, which were pretty common.
I'd contact museums with photography collections starting locally
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03/15/2013 05:51:39 PM · #4 |
Wow, how very cool! As  pixelpig commented on the image, the fashion should date these pretty closely. I'll defer to her knowledge, the guess of 1900 or so seems right to me.
It seems like this image may well have been taken local to the area; I wonder if it's possible to track down the family? Do you know the history of the desk? |
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03/15/2013 05:57:24 PM · #5 |
Originally posted by kirbic:
... I wonder if it's possible to track down the family? Do you know the history of the desk? |
There are myriad geneology resources on the 'net ... |
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03/15/2013 07:28:25 PM · #6 |
I now know a lot more about the glass plates. After I made the positive versions, my friend recognized her mother and grandmother in the pictures. She is now pretty sure that the photographer was her grandfather. She is going to show the pictures to her sister who may be able to recognize more of the people and places.
Thanks for your help.
~~DanW |
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03/15/2013 08:24:15 PM · #7 |
I have a box of unopened dry plates from the twenties in my collection of stuff. Wet plates were first, and dry plates were very common and still may be had.
There are a few people still doing both. This guy does immense wet plates, and is amazing. There are a couple of f-bombs in the video from a couple of the subjects, so if you have tender ears, you've been advised.
Ian Ruther |
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03/15/2013 09:16:19 PM · #8 |
What a great find1 The photos may not have been professional but they have great charm (and some of them very cool 'overlays').
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03/15/2013 09:37:07 PM · #9 |
| SO neat that you know who some of the folks are. Priceless family memories. As far as scanning, you can probably get pretty much all the detail that there is to get by imaging them with a DSLR, as long as the conditions are right. Cleaning them I'm not well versed in. Do they need wet cleaning, or will a dry cleaning suffice? |
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03/16/2013 01:55:05 PM · #10 |
That's very cool.  GeneralE notwithstanding, my knowledge of early glass-plate photography is sketchy at best. I'd agree, for what it's worth, that the clothing seems to date these to the early 1900's. Dry-plate photography was well-established and plates were widely available commercially by 1880 or so, if I recall correctly, so that part fits. These are almost certainly dry-plate since shots like the one with the cow require a reasonably fast "film speed" and the wet plates were SLOWWWW. How that gybes with the apparently hand-cut plates I don't know, but I could hazard a guess that someone with a 4x5 camera got hold of some 8x10 plates on the cheap and then did the best he could taking four smaller plates off each one in a darkroom, with mixed results as far clean edges go... |
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03/16/2013 03:39:26 PM · #11 |
| Wow. There are some wonderful expressions in those faces, though I am somewhat concerned that the little boy recover from his wingy costume. And the dog, the favoured dog. I guess 1910. Keep us posted. |
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03/16/2013 09:35:49 PM · #12 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
. . . These are almost certainly dry-plate since shots like the one with the cow require a reasonably fast "film speed" and the wet plates were SLOWWWW. How that gybes with the apparently hand-cut plates I don't know, but I could hazard a guess that someone with a 4x5 camera got hold of some 8x10 plates on the cheap and then did the best he could taking four smaller plates off each one in a darkroom, with mixed results as far clean edges go... |
That's a great idea! I thought that the evenness of the emulsion was evidence that they were commercially-manufactured plates but I couldn't square that with the rough edges of the glass. Now it makes sense; the photographer had a camera that took 3.25 x 4.25 plates and he had to cut down larger plates to fit. I'm sure I couldn't do a good job of cutting glass in the dark.
I've discovered that there is an archive of over 100,000 glass plate negative in Dayton, OH, not far from where we are in Cincinnati. I've suggested that the owners of the plates contact them for help with restoration. But I have a feeling that they may decide that what I have done is perfectly adequate. They just want to share them with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
~~DanW
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03/16/2013 11:48:10 PM · #13 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
I think until George Eastman figured out how to put a stable photographic emulsion on a strip of sprocketed celluloid everyone shot on glass plates, often using a liquid emulsion applied right at the time the photo was taken (wet-plate photography). Bear_Music should be along shortly to correct me with actual knowledge ... :-)
They are cool. A local history museum might be interested, and you could make a great photo book if you can get some biographical background ... |
Actually the gap between the invention of the dry plate and the rolled film was only 10 years (1879 & 1889). Calotype paper negatives however had been invented much earlier in 1834 by Henry Fox Talbot, although the first photographic images were on coated metal plates by Joseph Nicephore (in 1827). |
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03/17/2013 07:20:27 AM · #14 |
wow, dan, what a great project!
that photographer struck me as the proto-typical dpc'er, trying out different things on his family and them going along with his requests to stand over her, do this, do that, hold still, etc. even as commonplace as it is today, i think it will always have a magic about it.
thanks for sharing! |
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