Pre-Digital Photographic Technology

The way photographs have evolved is truly amazing. Learning about what people went through to take photos and publish them makes me appreciate pictures so much more. One type of photography that I find very interesting is the Wet Plate Collodion. These photos had high image quality but had a lengthy process to develop them. In the video The Wet Plate Collodion Process, the instructor says that it is very important when developing the plate to make sure you do not keep it soaking for too long. The plates should be developed for15-20 seconds. It is so important to keep the image in for the right amount of time because the image will end up distorted if the time is off. There are also important chemicals to develop the picture. The reason this type of photography can be dangerous is because of the chemicals and the cutting of the glass.

Photo by: Unknown
Image Source: http://www.photographica.nu/unk257.htm

There are many technical aspects when developing a wet plate collodion. First you have to cut the glass and make sure it’s clean. This is done with cyanide. In the video The Wet Plate Collodion Process the instructor uses black for positives and white for negatives. Then you need to do the flowing to make sure that there are no defects in the glass. It has to soak in a bath of different chemicals for 3-4 minutes in order to have the glass ready for the image. Lastly, the glass has to be sensitized. By the end of the process, the photo needs to be fixed and changed from a negative to a positive. There are many specific steps that make it difficult to get a quality image but it is all about light exposure.  “The popularity of the wet plate process was short-lived” according to the article by Joseph Smigiel, the wet plate wasn’t very popular but is being brought back by some art photographers. The wet plate was very popular around the time of the civil war. The hard part about having doing wet plate is having a dark room to do the photography. This type of photography needs to be studied and takes a long time to be perfected. This process was quickly replaced by the dry plate process.

            Photojournalism has changed so much since society starting taking photos. The photojournalist profession has done a whole 360 going from wet plate photos and artists drawing pictures in newspapers to digital photography. This allows photojournalists to instantly publish a picture or have it developed. The way photojournalists used to have to carry equipment and to capture the image was a long process. For example, the photojournalist Robert Fenton has a picture with his assistant on his wagon full of equipment. Modern day photojournalists have more high-tech equipment that makes it easier to capture a higher quality image. George Eastman changed the world for photojournalists by inventing dry plates and roll film. In Professor Nordell’s video he explains that Eastman worked on the half-tone process that came out in 1897 by photojournalist Thomas Platt in New York. This opened up new doors to the way the public saw photos and were able to see different tones. Society thought the images were very high-tech. Just imagine what they would think today if they saw the way we capture and publish images.

Photo by: Jenna Costa

            After taking my own picture, it makes me realize that we have it so easy. I can simply take a picture with my Smartphone and post it for everyone to see. The picture doesn’t need developing or to be put on glass. With pre-digital photography there was such a process to actually see the image. Now with just a click of a button you can see your picture and have full access to it. When I took the picture on my phone I could see the image I was going to take. If you were to use an older camera you would not be able to see what you were taking a picture of. I also took a lot of pictures that were almost frame by frame which made it easier to pick an image that I really wanted. One could compare this to the first motor drive that allowed for 10 pictures per second. By the 1980's auto focus was introduced. Today, most of us can do this on our phones. The digital photography allows for more enhanced image quality rather than what pre-digital provided.