Tom Skerritt
Got an e-mail from the editor of the The Stranger last week to shoot a Mr. Tom Skerritt. When I got the e-mail, I asked my co-worker who he was. He mentioned a few movies and when I finally looked him up, I instantly recognized him and was very excited to be photographing such an accomplished actor. When he finally came in for the shoot he was fascinated by the studio camera and the whole antique process. He couldn’t have been a more pleasant guy to shoot. I didn’t want to waste his time so I got right to work and managed to shoot 3 plates in an hours time. The first shot was way too dark. The second shot is the one that came out the best but the third was pretty good too.
This is the second shot and the one that will probably be on the cover of the Stranger. It was shot at f4.5 for 10 seconds with the Taylor-Hobson Cooke lens on an 8 x 10 peice of glass. The godamn hot plate that use to dry the glass plates was way too hot and the corner cracked. It just broke off a corner and didn’t shatter the plate into bits…… :0/
Right before he left I talked him into posing with the big camera.
No CommentsWhole plate (6.5 x 8.4 inches) Mercury Pot
here are some images of my sweet new mercury pot made by the pyromaniac and industrial artist , Rusty Oliver. In case you all didn’t know, daguerreotypes are developed out over hot mercury. Mercury sits in a cup at the bottom of the pot and is heated to about 167 degrees fahrenheit. The daguerreotype plate with a latent imaged sits atop the hot mercury in a holder and 5 minutes or so later, an image should appear :/
The pot design was a mixture of a Mike Robinson’s design, my own design and the fabrication skills of Mr. Rusty Oliver.
Here are some of those pictures before I made the plate holders on top:
here is the finished pot with the plate seat and holder. The seat has a seperate slide to keep the pot sealed when the plate holder is off. The plate holder has a seperate slide to that locks with the seat slide. When the plate holder is placed on the pot both slides are opened to expose the plate to the mercury and develop out the plate.
Whole plate Fuming Boxes
I have completed the two very essential iodine and bromine fuming boxes. I will post the finished boxes later but here are a couple of images of the boxes before they recieved a coat of shellack, a lid, and brass hardware. There is a pyrex dish that sits inside the box that actually holds the chemicals. The top lip had to be ground down perfectly flat so it would seal with the ground glass slide. The Pyrex dish sits on a spring base that adds some upward pressure to ensure that no fumes leak out. here is a short video:
I tested the seal of one of the boxes by burning some paper inside and closing the lid. A vaccum is created as the oxygen is used up in the box. The slide was opened to break the seal and closed to see if any smoke or odor escaped. The box did very well and I am pleased with how they work. The metal springs at the bottom will have to be dipped in shellack or painted to keep them from corroding. The iodine and especially the bromine are extremely corrosive. Here is a video of that:
here is the shellacked box with hinges. The tension of the springs can be adjusted by bending them to give the right amount of upward pressure. I may figure out a better spring system but for now this seems to work just fine.
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