I often make ambrotypes where I coat a black varnish directly on the collodion image and then view it the “right way round” through the glass , I like the feel and look of an image “in” the glass. An orotone has the same feeling and the added dimension as the “gold” varnish seems to give a greater depth to the work. Orotones made from ambrotypes are “interesting”, but few ambrotypes are enhanced by simply using a gold varnish, black bitumen is, for me, the definitive ambrotype.
The first orotones I made were from sheets of glass coated with silver based emulsions. I usually used the “Foma” emulsion and then printed directly onto the coated glass from a negative in an enlarger. Curtis had the advantage of using standard commercial glass negatives plates made by ‘Seed’ (bought out by Kodak). These were mostly panchromatic plates, the popular liquid emulsions sold today all seem to be slower orthochromatic
A problem, for me, is the cost of making plates with commercial emulsions, even mixing my own emulsions it costs a lot more than a box of paper and when I am printing I may make many test prints before I have what I am looking for.
My original reason for starting wet plate collodion was to find a way to make large negatives. In the 1970 and ’80s I worked mainly with 5×4 inch and 10×8 inch negatives and Ektachrome, but the cost today is prohibative. Wet plate collodion offers a way for me to make large negatives – up to 30 x 40 cm in size, with superb definition. As I like “pictorialist” types of images, calotypes also give me the option for large negatives. I avoid anything digital and the cost of digital printing along with all the kerfuffel of lumpy software and sitting in front of a computer screen is encouraging me back further into the 19th century. But I also wish to work in colour.
With carbon transfer and carbro, I can work with black and white negative techniques and then choose any colour pallette I wish to produce the images that I can envision.
But this part of my writing is focussed on the glass.
I love glass as a way to hold and manipulate an image , It is cheap as chips, durable, will last forever and does not deteriorate. So I now do most of my final printing and a lot of my recording and preparation work using glass as the preferred medium.
For most work I use 2mm thick, picture frame glass, today from local merchants this costs me about 22 euro a square meter. A good way to buy pre-cut glass is to buy simple picture frames from local bargain stores. Thes frames come in many sizes, one I use a lot is the 18cm x 24 cm (full plate) frame which costs 2 euro or less – I prefer to buy 30cm x 40cm glass frames and cut down to size. An advantage with these packaged frames is that the edges are ground smooth and safe, they also have clips and a sheet of backing board which I can use to hold and present the finished print.
Two euro a print seems more expe,onsive than paper, but a sheet of glass can be cleaned and used many times until I have a working print. Some glass I have re-used over ten times.