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Comment by RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm | Hacker News Reader

The pictured glass plate photos seem fake to me, i.e. they seem to be recent pictures which have been photoshoped to look like glass plates:

If you go to the gallery you'll notice the 3rd picture contains some cables at the bottom.

These cables seem to be attached to the building by a *transparent* piece of material.

Which would be plastic I guess?

And transparent plastic wouldn't have been used for attaching cables to buildings back then?

It also says "Photograph by Tomas van Houtryve", and that person is still alive according to Google. If it really were glass plates he would probably be dead already?

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There are quite a few people shooting with vintage equipment and techniques. They do it for many reasons - for a specific aesthetic, to evoke a certain time period, to achieve technical qualities not readily doable with modern equipment, because it's fun to play with old tools, because there's a market for art using older techniques, etc.

I have a friend who's business is producing images - portraiture and landscapes - on very large glass plates for example.

http://lachambrephotographique.squarespace.com/

I have another friend who is a high-end commercial photographer by day, but for his personal art, he shoots with large format view cameras - which would be using glass plate negatives - in this style of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston.

>they seem to be recent pictures which have been photoshoped to look like glass plates:

If you click Tomas's name and scroll down some you see on his profile "Photographer Tomas van Houtryve captured the 19th-century grotesques, or chimeras, with 19th-century equipment: under a dark cloak, on glass plates, with a wooden camera he picked up in a Paris antique shop."

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/photographer/tomas-van-...

He's a modern Belgian documentary photographer using period equipment.

Thanks for figuring that out!

Now further questions arise:

Did he artificially age the glass plates?

Because the damage of the photo layer at the edges would normally be due to aging?

How would you even age them artificially like that?

Also, where do you obtain fresh, unused glass plates nowadays? I have a suitable camera but no plates! :)

I have no clue about the process but if I had to guess I imagine it has something to do with the chemicals not being evenly distributed either by inexperience, some sort of mask used before chemical exposure to achieve the effect, or the process is just prone to doing that.

The process is just prone to doing that.

It's a combination of things - uneven application of the likely hand applied chemical coating, handling the plates by the edges while loading and processing, unevenness of the metal frame surrounding the plate in the camera, older lenses which had vignetting and lower sharpness at the edges, processing chemicals seeping into the edges of the coating, etc etc.

Short film here: https://vimeo.com/699756494?embedded=true&source=video_title...

You can do an internet search for plates for your particular size or model of camera. They're probably out there.

j lane dry plates

https://www.pictoriographica.com/dry-plate-blog

I am curious how you arrived to "fake" as conclusion where there is absolutely no sign or reason for faking anything.

I think that it is obvious, to casual observers as well, that this is a modern day photographer using vintage equipment. No need to resort to detective work to notice the obvious modern wiring (which is present in every picture except for one, the elephant), or that the author is still alive, when that information is just in the captions.

And the reason why it's done is obvious, too: It's a great artistic choice that meshes well with the subject's aesthetic.

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