Coleman Beach

Inverted digi-snap of calotype negative. Mouse over note to view calotype.

This calotype had lots of problems, starting with curl that I didn't control when sensitizing, which caused the damaged areas in the sky -- it was my last piece of iodized paper, or I would have started over. Then I thought it was overexposed ( it wasn't ) and I developed it too slowly. After about 50 minutes developing, I realized what was happening and could have fixed it, but put an eyedropper of sulfamic acid into the tray by mistake instead of silver.. and that was the end of developing it! The negative is very red and it is underdeveloped.

Anyway, I enjoyed making the photograph and met some nice German visitors while making it. We had a laugh when he held his compact digital camera next to my big view camera. The seagull landed on the rock about 30 seconds into the exposure and posed there the rest of the time :) Even though the photo didn't come out well, it was a lovely day at the coast and I enjoyed the attempt.

LV 15 water, 14 sand, 13 rock. 5m30s f/22.

As noted above, due to a mix-up with some notes, I thought it was overexposed, and developed it for 50 minutes adding scant eyedroppers of aceto-nitrate of silver several times along the way, wondering why it was coming up so slowly :) I think it still could have been developed correctly if I'd added more silver, but no great loss since it was already damaged and I'm not going to print it.

I iodized a new batch of paper today, so will be ready to continue soon!