Primitive Photography & Handmade Historic Prints
One of the smartest upgrades I can make in my silver gelatin emulsion workflow is better control.
When I add silver nitrate into salted gelatin, the rate of that addition matters. It is not just a convenience issue. It is a chemistry issue. That is why I decided to start working with a peristaltic pump. It gives me a way to make the silver addition more steady, more repeatable, and easier to test.
This plate belongs to Pictorial Whispers, my ongoing body of work using flowers, natural light, a vintage window, and 19th-century photographic processes to speak about grief, memory, endurance, and healing.
I am not going deep into silver gelatin emulsion chemistry and theory just to collect old formulas or satisfy technical curiosity.
I am going deep because my vision demands it.
The body of work I want to make is not built around modern sharpness, technical perfection, or speed. I am drawn instead to photographs that feel atmospheric, handmade, and deeply personal. I want them to carry softness, presence, and mystery. I want them to stand one step away from sharp reality so they can feel more interpretive, more emotional, and more alive. What matters to me is not perfect description, but resonance.
That is why the chemistry matters so much.
I do not want a workflow where the most important material decisions have already been made for me. I want to control and influence every step I can. For this body of work, it must be fully analog and fully hands-on. I am not searching for a faster method or a more efficient solution. I am searching for a process that feels honest.
My subject matter is part of this same vision. I have always been drawn to flowers and to lone trees, especially winter trees. For me, they are not just things to photograph. They are metaphorical forms that speak about beauty, fragility, endurance, loss, renewal, and the passing of time. At this stage of my life, I want to stay close to home, close to the darkroom, and work slowly with the quiet forms of the Ozarks.
The tools and materials follow directly from that vision. Whole plate is the right format for my eye. Soft-focus vintage large format lenses are the right optics. Handmade silver gelatin paper negatives are the path I want to pursue, and I want to pair them with handmade potassium chloride gaslight printing paper so I can shape the final print from warm and creamy to quiet neutral through paper and chemistry. In other words, this series is not just about chemistry. It is about building a complete photographic language from the ground up.
That is the spirit behind these articles. I am studying emulsion chemistry and emulsion theory because I want to understand the material deeply enough to shape it toward my own artistic ends. I do not want to merely follow recipes. I want to understand why an emulsion behaves the way it does, what each variable changes, and how the negative and print can be designed together to support the kind of image I am trying to make.
I am not going deep into silver gelatin emulsion chemistry and theory just to collect old formulas or satisfy technical curiosity. I am going deep because my vision demands it. The body of work I want to make is not built around modern sharpness, technical perfection, or speed. I am drawn instead to photographs thatContinue reading “What Baker Understood About Emulsions in 1941 That Still Matters Today”
If you are learning to coat your own paper negatives or silver chloride printing papers, one of the smartest things you can do is practice before you ever touch real emulsion.
I am not going deep into silver gelatin emulsion chemistry and theory just to collect old formulas or satisfy technical curiosity. I am going deep because my vision demands it. The body of work I want to make is not built around modern sharpness, technical perfection, or speed. I am drawn instead to photographs thatContinue reading “From Precipitation to Chemical Ripening: How a Silver Gelatin Emulsion Gets Its Character”
In this series, I have been building a simple foundation for understanding silver gelatin emulsions. This article is the next step.
A silver gelatin emulsion may look mysterious at first, but the basic chemistry is not as complicated as it seems. At its core, you are creating light-sensitive silver halide crystals in gelatin.
In the first article in this series, I introduced the basic idea behind an ordinary silver gelatin emulsion. In this article, I want to take the next step and make the ingredients easier to understand.
Most photographers never think about what an emulsion really is.
They buy film, paper, or plates and get to work. But underneath all of those materials is the same basic idea. A silver gelatin emulsion is a layer of light-sensitive silver halide crystals held in gelatin and coated onto a support. That support might be paper for paper negatives, or glass for silver gelatin dry plates.
We live in a time when billions of new images are made every day. Most of them appear for a moment and are gone just as fast. They are seen, scrolled past, and forgotten. That alone raises an honest question. Why do we still make photographs at all in a world already overflowing with images?