The Daguerreotype: Contemporary work by Jonathan Danforth

Bling Bling! I’ve been wanting a new lens for quite a while because the 300mm Ektar that I have for my 8×10 is rather bland. When I use the Ektar with a 4×5″ Daguerreotype, it’s nice because I have a telephoto but the bellows extension for a 1:1 is just crazy to the tune of about 30 inches. I have always craved the wide angle because I can capture a much more realistic vision than I can with the so-called “normal” lenses. True, for portraiture, I’d be better served with the Ektar’s focal length but nonetheless, I can drool and for $2599.99, drool I will.

Those of you who have known me and were willing to listen (more…)

I spent yesterday polishing some engraver’s copper that I bought from Rembrandt Graphics. For the first time, I’m going to be making my own plates instead of buying pre-made plates from Theiss Plating. Theiss has been very friendly but I’ve discovered that I can save about $10-12 per plate if I take the copper plates to a local silver plater instead. Surtronics, the plater, seems very capable and, more importantly, they didn’t laugh me out of the door when I asked them to make me some Daguerreotype plates!

The raw copper plates that I bought from Rembrandt came in pre-polished which is to say that they were rather mirror like but still had fine scratches throughout. Through a considerable amount of trial and error, I found that the best results were to be had by (more…)

I stumbled upon the photography of Jonas Bendiksen while purusing the blog over at wmmna. In particular, I was drawn to the imagery in the Satellite series in which Bendiksen catalogs and reports on the aftermath of Soviet space launches. In particular, however, I was struck by the magical underwater quality of this image of a steel mill in the Transdniester region of Moldova. The image makes me think about our future and what will remain of our creations when we’re gone.

-Jonathan