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The Victorian death portrait: a family photo guaranteed to send shivers up your spine

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At a glance, this image looks like an old photograph of five somewhat bored children posing for a family photo. And indeed, it is. However, it hides a certain macabre secret: the smallest child on the far left is actually dead and is propped up on a stand.

To our modern standards, this seems rather creepy, but in the Victorian era, these ‘death portraits,’ as they became known, were very common. It offers a fascinating glimpse into what life may have been like for the early jobbing photographer of the Victorian period.[Read More…]

Lomography brings back the Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 lens with new silver and black paint jobs

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Lomography’s Art Lens series has grown with the addition of the Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 lens in both Onyx Black and Silver Graphite finishes. The lens was first launched by Lomography back in 2016 via Kickstarter and now it’s a regular fixture in the lineup for a price of just $299. It’s their take on the historic lens that came at the creation of practical photography in 1938 with the combination of the Chevalier Achromat Lens attached to a Daguerreotype camera.

The lens is said to have a “series of beautiful aberrations” that “bathed images in an alluring veil of light” creating glazy, soft images at wide apertures. Lomography’s original release of this lens helped to revive the lost aesthetic. At a focal length of 64mm, the lens goes from silky soft-focus images wide open at f/2.9 to razor-sharp from f/5.6 onwards.

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How to make your own 35mm daguerreotype safely and cheaply

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Did you know that you can make your own 35mm daguerreotypes without using dangerous substances (such as mercury)? Also, you can do it without expensive gear. In this video from George Eastman Museum, historic process specialist Nick Brandreth will teach you how. So if you’d like to experiment a bit, let’s see what you’ll need.

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Watch the delicate process of preserving a 200-year-old daguerreotype

I’ve always been fascinated with the conservation process and how delicate and complex it is. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy this video from The Museum of Modern Art. In this video, conservator of photographs Lee Ann Daffner will guide you through a process of conserving one of the oldest objects in NoMA’s collection: an almost 200-year-old daguerreotype.

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“Chimacabres” are unique creatures created by combining daguerreotype with light painting

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Chimacabres come out at night.  They are around during the day too of course, but the night is when they really thrive.  In the dark it’s harder to tell if you’re face to face with a fellow person, or if it’s a chimacabre in front of you, and they don’t even have faces.  No, they are vicious, purely instinctual, unforgiving. They read you with the speed of a car commercial disclaimer, immediately sniff out the soft spot, and burrow in mercilessly.

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A multi plate, multi lens daguerreotype panorama

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I’ve been experimenting non-stop with a few new daguerreotype techniques, and however promising the results are looking so far, those experiments are slow going, and I’ll release at least part of it hopefully soon. But here’s something I thought up and was able to execute in a relatively speedy manner, which I believe warrants a look.  I don’t believe this method of making a panoramic image has ever been utilized before, so I’m dubbing it ‘Antorama’.

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This new technique recovers even the most damaged daguerreotypes

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Daguerreotypes break down with time and can eventually become ruined and unrecognizable. But researchers at Western University in Canada have created a new technique that recovers even the most damaged daguerreotypes. It reveals what lies under the severe degradation and shows the images in all their original detail.

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We are giving away a gorgeous Lomography Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 Art Lens

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UPDATE: this giveaway is now over, thanks everyone for playing and a huge thanks for Lomography for the prize. Hit the bottom to see if you won

Some lenses produce stunning photos, and some lenses are also just stunningly beautiful themselves. This is the case with Lomography’s Brass Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 Art Lens  (street value €499.00) which we are giving away.

I have to admit, I love the look of the lens, but I am equally excited about how magnificent this lens looks like. It’s a stunner! Looks aside though, this lens is made after the world’s first photographic optic lens from the 19th century, so shooting with the Daguerreotype has some serious heritage to it.

Entering is easy just fill the box above and you’re in. (share with your friends for extra entries, they will thank you for it!)

Come October 18th, we will pick a winner at random to receive a Brass Daguerreotype Achromat 2.9/64 Art Lens with their mount of choise

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This is the oldest known portrait of a U.S. President

There’s an interesting story about the oldest presidential portrait known so far. The sixth U.S. president John Quincy Adams sat for a photographer in August 1843, and the daguerreotype emerged in an antique shop in 1970, priced at 50 cents. Today it sits in the National Portrait Gallery as the oldest survived photo of an American president. However, today, almost 50 years later, another daguerreotype has appeared. It’s older, and it also seems to have an interesting story.

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The ABC of photography ‘types’

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Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph opened at Media Space, part of the Science Museum, in London last week. Using a mixture of images, artefacts, letters, and publications, the exhibition charts the development of photography by William Henry Fox Talbot against the backdrop of his contemporaries. For anyone with a smidgen of interest in the history or science of photography, it’s a must-see exhibition.

As I wandered about the exhibition, getting high on its heady mix of photography and history, it occurred to me that a crib sheet of the early photographic processes, detailing their steps and requirements as well as their progress and their pitfalls, would be a useful article. So here you have it: from daguerreotype to tintype, an ABC of early photography.

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