Postby Maris » 09 Apr 2016, 09:35
Most times photographers hate someone else shooting over their shoulder but Sandy Barrie the daguerreotypist didn't mind. It was a special and possibly historic occasion. And Sandy had taken the trouble to organise the window light, posing chair, and backdrop for what was going to be a 20 second exposure on a iodine/bromine fumed silver plate. Sandy's camera was an authentic and spectacularly valuable Daguerreotype camera from the 1840s.
The development process using mercury fumes is hazardous but the excess atoms of mercury ( very very few) were vented into Grey Street, Brisbane. Passers by did not notice. I was next into the posing chair and still have the Daguerreotype portrait.