GLASS PLATE NEGATIVE RESTORATION PROCESS

In the age of digital photography and the advancement of smartphone cameras, we tend to forget the photographic pioneers of old who experimented with photography in its infancy, battling with issues we simply take for granted. Two such pioneer photographers were Frank Beken and Alfred John West, both of whom are early photographers we have showcased in our inaugural collection of classic sailing yacht photography.

Today, cameras are a fraction of their original size, packed with technology such as auto focus and camera shake that enables us to simply point our camera at the subject matter and technology takes care of the picture. We then simply upload the digital image to our server and when ready, print the picture. While I appreciate this is a simplistic overview, it does serve to set the scene when comparing old with new.

Over 100 years ago, the story was very different especially with taking photographs at sea. Cameras were very heavy, lens and shutter speeds poor, and with negatives made of large and heavy glass plate, the largest of which I have seen measuring 16’’ x 14”. This size, added to the problem of standing in a small boat you have rowed out to the race course, less than 20ft in length, battling wind and tide, with one opportunity at a time to take a photograph, bring a new meaning to the phrase “patience is a virtue”!

After a long day at sea, with perhaps a haul of only 30 pictures taken and without knowing, as we instantly do today, their outcome, they returned home to their darkrooms to process the glass plates. With each glass plate developed, those that were acceptable would have a contact print made (the photograph) the size of the glass plate itself in the hope of selling the image to the yacht’s owner, guests or crew.  After that, the glass plate negative was named, given a reference number, entered into the photographers day book, wrapped in tissue and placed in a box for storage.

With some glass plate negatives, over 130 years later, the Brett Gallery embarked upon its ambitious project to bring a selection of these images to life, in large format, for the world to behold. This process was long and complicated, requiring great patience and care, as each glass plate was very fragile with an image that was irreplaceable if the restoration process went wrong.

So what is a glass plate negative? This form of negative preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography. A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated onto a glass plate, which was then exposed to light, capturing the image. Originally glass plates would have been “wet coated” at the time of use. However, by the late 19th century pre-coated dry plates were widely in use. They were the first photographic negative material that was manufactured and mass produced.

Each glass plate negative has its unique restoration issues to overcome, many of which are now only technically possible to resolve with the advancement of digital restoration techniques such as Photoshop. I want to share with you one such glass plate negatives journey from an archive to the gallery, being that of Meteor II Aground, an iconic image photographed by Alfred John West in 1899.

The glass plate negative itself measures 305mm x 254mm (12” x 10”) and is 2mm thick and was, at the commencement of its restoration in 2015, 116 years old! In order for us to see what we are dealing with,  the glass plate negative is initially scanned, in its raw, untouched state, at very high resolution. This process takes about 45 minutes, with the actual scan itself taking about 30min and computer processing time for the image about 15 minutes. In the case of this negative, it produced a raw tiff file of 600mb.

With the negative image now in digital format, we export the file into photoshop and invert the negative into a positive image. At this stage, we can gauge issues such as focus, depth of field, overall image composition and importantly if the glass plate negative itself is flat. Given scan times and heat build up from the scanner, if the glass plate negative is not perfectly flat, Newton’s rings can appear on the digital image. These rings usually form due to interference created by the reflection of light from a flat surface onto a spherical surface. In scanners moisture on either the glass plate negative or on the glass scanning surface (the tiny spherical droplets of moisture are responsible for the concentric rings in the pattern) can result in this problem. Luckily, Meteor Aground was free of this problem.

Given that a computer image on a screen, which is backlit, will always look different to a printed photograph, that is front lit, we initially printed the image on a large ink jet printer (giclee print) at A0 (1,189mm x 841mm) size. This enables us to visually inspect what restoration we had to undertake, especially that can bee seen by the naked eye in print form at the eventual size we will print the image at.

With the significant passage of time, glass plate negatives can experience varying storage and handling conditions all of which impact on the negative itself. The principles issue that arises is grime and dust through poor handling and storage and silvering of the glass plate emulsion. Occasionally you also come across cracks in the glass plate and flaking of the emulsion that has lifted from the glass plate. Lastly, some photographers in period lacquered the emulsion side of the plate. However, with the passage of time, and stability of these lacquers, they have started to “crackle glaze” akin to a shattered but unbroken window.

This glass plate simply needed a thorough clean. To achieve this, we immersed the glass plate negative in distilled water and a photo flow and gently cleaned the plate with cotton balls. After that, the plate was left to dry and then re-scanned. The resulting scan showed improvements in the image, but there was still a multitude of blemishes. These showed up two forms being black spots which are holes in the emulsion and white marks being dust embedded into the emulsion itself which we could not remove with cleaning. It would be of interest to note that on other glass plates we have also had fungus infections and surface chips in the glass itself. As our intention with this collection to produce images of a size never seen before, where every blemish would be visible to the naked eye, restoration becomes more important. Historically glass plate images tend to be printed in smaller formats typically up to A2 as you can hide a multitude of issues from the naked eye such as focus, depth of field and imperfections and damage all of which would be seen at our super sizes.

The next process was to digitally remove these marks in photoshop one by one, a process that took 4 very patient days. At this stage, the negative is as it was at the point it was taken. After that, the decision is made on how to present the image best. A basic requirement is to horizon adjust the picture, given it was taken at sea in a moving boat. The second is the picture crop. With Meteor Aground, the image best suited a panoramic format, so various crops were tried and printed at the size to see which presented itself better.

The last and most important process is preparing the image to print. The silver gelatin photographic paper is very sensitive. It requires a skilled eye to ensure the image is printed with the right combinations of exposure, contrast, highlights, mid tones, shadows, light and dark tones.

The finished version is simply exquisite!