What is Wet Plate Photography?
Wet plate photography is an old-fashioned photographic process in which the image is formed on a wet plate rather than a dry film. It is more suited to black and white photography, though it can be used in colour as well.
Wet plate photography was a new photographic method that was invented in England in the late 1800s. It was a way to quickly make prints from large negatives. This is how it worked;
1. The plates were coated with a liquid emulsion which contained silver chloride crystals.
2. The exposed film is immersed in this emulsion, and the image is ‘developed’ (i.e. the image on the negative becomes visible) in a chemical bath.
3. The developed negative is placed on a piece of glass and the developer solution removed. The image on the glass is then treated with mercury vapour to harden the emulsion, and the print is fixed … Read the rest
