The carbon transfer one day workshop will guide you through the process of making a print from a photographic negative onto glass.
It is a contact printing process so a negative the same size as the final print is required. This can be anything such as a digital negative, a wet plate collodion negative, a silver gelatine negative or a calotype,
In the carbon transfer process, the negative is printed by putting it into contact with a “tissue” which is coated with coloured (I use carbon black) gelatin and then sensitised to light, exposing the sensitised tissue to UV light which proportionally hardens the gelatin in relation to the negative density, placing the exposed tissue into direct contact with carefully prepared glass, developing the glass/tissue “sandwich” in a warm water bath which will separate the tissue from the glass and then dissolve the unhardened gelatin.
The sensitised, coloured gelatin in the tissue, when exposed to UV light, will harden in proportion to the density of the negative in contact with it. Clearer parts (the shadows) of the negative will harden more than the darker parts (the highlights).
The result is a positive print on the glass.
The process is logical and simple – in reality there are many things to go wrong (and they do).
In the workshop I will provide a fresh batch of ready made tissue (black) – pre-mixed and tested sensitiser – cleaned, treated and prepared glass. I do offer special half day workshops for these processes, there is not time to do all this work in one day
I have large temperature controlled 20 liter water baths
These glass prints I then used to make orotones, by coating the image surface with a “gold” varnish or lacquer.
I started working with carbon transfer processes when I was looking for a better way to print a photograph onto a glass surface than by coating the glass with a silver gelatin emulsion.