Jason Greenberg Motamedi is a fellow Daguerreotypist whose work I really enjoy. I have chatted several times with Jason about his craft and, not surprisingly, he does things a bit differently than I do. Daguerreotypists tend to share many things but our taxonomy as a group can be rather diverse at times. I spoke recently about how Mike Robinson, a daguerreotypist in Canada, uses a method of plate polishing that I had not previously heard of. Using olive oil, I bet his process smells a great deal better than mine.
I have been talking with silversmiths and people in other fields about how best to polish my silver plate. It’s tricky business! With my latest batch of plates, I’m going to try an all-manual route to see what I can do with good old elbow grease instead of heavy machinery.
The point of all this is that each daguerreotypist executes his or her process differently and I wanted to emphasize the point that this is OK! Jason has some beautiful work yet he goes about his polishing, sensitizing, exposure, developing, and gilding slightly differently than myself. Jason’s quite lucid description on his site offers a different point of view from that seen here and here.
-Jonathan