Louis Daguerre was the inventor of the daguerreotype. No surprise that he was a chemist. A daguerrotype images is processed by exposing an image directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. Then developing by heating over a cup of mercury. After this you "fix" these in hyposulfate of soda It was a very advanced process for his time. He invented this type in 1839. It is very similar to the tintype processing. I love these types of processing because of the history behind them. I feel like by processing film and images as they once were long ago you have a better understanding of photography itself. For example, I think that taking film photography in the darkroom will help my to understand digital much better. These basics are where photography first came from and they are why photography has come so far today. The images themselves are very beautiful, they are usually portraits. The examples are of the Daguerreotype process, not done by Louis himself.
Good. Daguerreotype and Calotype were the first major photographic processes. Daguerreotype, while early on in the history of photography, is ironically a very high fidelity process. It was sharper and more detailed than many processes that came later.
ReplyDeleteDigital and darkroom processes still share vital aspects that go back to the beginnings of photography... its about light and time. I agree that working in the darkroom makes this understanding more explicit that staring at a computer!
Thanks for the info! I was curious about Daguerre because google is celebrating him today. :0)
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