Liquid Light On Glass????

Ok so I am playing with Liquid Light on glass. I have done this years ago with not the

greatest success. After hours of recoating and developing I ended up with weak images

and cut up hands. This time around I beveled the glass and am looking for anyone that

has done this before. I have read the Liquid Light instructions and been to sites that talk

about it but nobody talks of doing it on glass. If you have any info, insight, or advice

please let me know.

 

Thanks

 

Hunter

What's the question?

 

James

I think the questions Ryan is asking are how to best go about applying the emulsion, how many layers, do I need to coat the glass with something else first, etc., etc.

 

Sorry hunter but I have not tried liquid emulsion on glass yet but hopefully you will get advise from others here. You could also try alternativephotography.com or apug.org

 

Peter

I coat glass with a matt acrylic varnish. Then I apply a couple of coats of emulsion after the varnish has dried. That's pretty much all there is to it with glass.

 

I believe LL requires that you use glossy varnish instead of matt.

 

Good luck with it.

 

Colm

 

www.colmmccarthy.com

By the way, LL is notorious for weak images. Try Silverprint or Kentmere emulsions. Much faster and better contrast.

Ryan,

I could answer your question and give you little hints that LL doen't tell you on the

instructions. I just need to know are your trying to make a glass neg or a positive image on

glass?

Peter, you don't need to apologize for me, I just needed more info. from Ryan. But thanks

anyway....

You can coat directly on glass with the proper prep by washing with a good soap and water or other grease cutting cleaner. There are methods shown in the book "Silver Gelatin".

 

You should expect to lose contrast with any emulsion when coated on glass and compared with the same image on paper for example. You lose over 50% of the contrast, as the glass image is transparent, and you lose over 1 stop in speed on glass because paper has given you one stop in speed through back reflection which glass does not.

 

Ron Mowrey

As Ron says, you can coat directly onto glass, but I get better results with a buffer layer of varnish on there. I still think LL is the weak link in your process though.

For years, glass plates were made by diretly coating on the glass which was merely cleaned with a dichromate / sulfuric acid solution.

 

I would fear the contents of the varnish might affect the emulsion. The use of additional materials often messes up the emulsion. There are many subbing layer formulas that can be used to improve adhesion to glass and other supports, and which have been checked for photographic activity (or lack thereof).

 

Ron Mowrey

I coat glass with a simple albumen solution. All emulsions that I've used stick to it

permanently. This is what 19th century photographers coated glass negs with.

 

You make it by adding the white from one large egg to 1000ml distilled water. Blend on

high for 5 minutes, tossing out any foam that forms. add 2 drops of ammonia to

discourage mold. Pour over very clean glass, let dry, and use within a week.

Good luck...

David

Sorry,

I forgot to say that you should filter the albumen solution several times through two

coffee filters before coating the glass.

I clean glass with a mixture of equal parts whiting, water and rubbing alcohol shaken

up in an old katsup squirt bottle.

 

good luck

-David

prifti.net

Ron,

 

I've found acrylic varnish to be extremely stable as a base on both metal and glass. Of course, by extremely stable I mean that pieces coated in this manner 4 or 5 years ago have had no degradation. Whether they'll last 100 years is another matter.

 

I prefer to coat glass in this manner as I find it gives slightly better tonal range than coating emulsion directly to the glass.

 

Colm

Colm,

You don't have problems with adhesion onto water based materials? I've only had good

resuts with gelatin sizing, albumen, or oil based products. what emulsions do you use?

David

prifti.net

David, the acrylic varnish I use (Goldens) is not water based. Certain varnishes caused adhesion problems, but I no longer remember which ones as I settled on Goldens or Griffins several years ago. I used to use Silverprint emulsion, now I use Kentmere. I expect to be making my own emulsions, or moving on to Van Dyke or Cyanotypes this time next year, as the commercially produced emulsions get harder to find.

Oh and David, your stuff is awesome.

In my experience, certain amines used in acrylics can fog emulsions. That is why I was hesitant to recommend them.

 

The regular varnishes with an oil or alcohol base tend to be too repellant and that is the reason for my hesitancy there.

 

Most all texts I have use the albumen approach or just coat directly on the glass.

 

 

Ron Mowrey

Actually, I might switch to albumen. Sounds easier to work with than varnish, and considerably cheaper.

David,

 

this sounds like an interesting process, but when you said above that you just wait a week and use. What would the next step be. Is that egg solution reactive to light or do you soak it with something else? Do you need to let the solution dry in a cool dark place?

 

thanks

http://albumen.stanford.edu/index.shtml

Ashley,

I meant that you should use the albumen with in a week of mixing, as it is an ideal surface

for molds to form. It is used as the substrate for the light sensitive emulsion. After you

coat the glass with albumen, you let it dry and apply the liquid emulsion onto it under

safelight conditions.

 

Good liquid emulsion reference: "Silver Gelatin: A User's Guide to Liquid Photographic

Emulsions" by Sarah Jones, Martin Reed... Amazon has it

 

Good Luck!

 

David

prifti.net

Thanks, now i understand.

 

I have been successful with carbon printing over the past year or so, and now i was thinking about dabbling in some other alternative techniques.

 

I'll have to check out that book you suggested and that link posted above has a lot of resources online that I think I could use too.

 

Thanks!

As part of my PhD research I have been using liquid light on cast glass with some success using chemistry fom Rockland Colloid. I have used various varnishes as a sub but found the best results from cleaning the glass properly and applying the emulsion direct. I have done this mainly because I am then firing the glass in a kiln. AG-Plus has a higher silver content and so is ideal for firing but regular liquid light works just fine too. If you are not firing the glass, then a sub is probably necessary, and would agree with other contributers that albumen base is the best choice. If you are having problems with weak contrast, then apply thicker liquid light as this improves contrast and depth of blacks.

Andy, I took a look at your Liquid Light artwork coatings on sheet (float) glass and subsequent kiln firing at:

http://www.photo.net/photo/4347924

 

 

 

The firing temp of 1544F (840C) is rather high for float (soda ash) glass: I would expect it to be more in the 1150F neighborhood. In fact, if the 1540F temperature is used to fire a 3-D object, such as a drinking glass, it would become molten and severely deform, almost to the point of becoming a blob.

 

 

 

I saw this firsthand in a shuttle kiln at a glassware decorator in 1984, when the ancient mechanical temperature controller didn't trip on an overnight batch, destroying the 210 hurricane glasses and the furniture, and (all but) destroying that bed. The controller was repaired; but again, in 1985, it overshot again over lunchtime; but this time we caught it at about 1300F. The half of the load of glassware was deformed, but the ceramic mugs in the other half of the load were OK, though the reds were off color.

 

 

Even borosilicate glass will deform up at 1540F.

<p>As far as I know you can still order glass plates in Russia from slavich.ru , virtually of any size.<br>

Of course you can try wet plate collodion, or liquid emulsion, you can find info on alternativephotography.com</p>

<p>Alexey<br>

cac-group.org</p>

<p>hey...so we're doing liquid light in my alternative processes class. i have a fairly simple question to start, as i haven't given it a shot yet...when coated/exposed on glass, is it similar to wet plate--meaning, does it appear as a negative until placed against a black background??</p>