Shadow & Glass 2026-09-07T21:49:48-04:00 Brian https://www.shadowandglass.com Notes from the Archive: Damaged, but not Lost Brian https://www.shadowandglass.com/damaged-but-not-lost.html 2026-08-13T20:32:00-04:00  

A small photographic glass plate being held on the edges by a gloved hand. The emulsion on the plate shows severe signs of degradation, flaking, and discoloration. An image is not immediately apparent.
The glass plate as it appears to the naked eye.
A scan of the damaged photographic plate. The damage is still evident, but the portrait of two children can be seen. It's difficult to make out most of their clothing, but one is earring a plaid outfit with buttons and they're both wearing lace collars.
The scanned glass plate.

Never would I have expected a photographic plate (wet plate collodion, in this case) with this much damage to still hold a discernible image. But... there it is. Interestingly, it's not (or is no longer) a negative. I'm not sure if something happened during development or if degradation over time (this was probably taken in the 1870s-1880s) has flipped the image, but it's a positive. I know you can do "reversal processing" with film (giving you a positive transparency instead of a negative), but I don't think I've ever heard of it being done with wet plate.

]]> Notes from the Archive: Auto Repair Brian https://www.shadowandglass.com/notes-from-the-archive-auto-repair.html 2026-07-28T20:40:00-04:00
A scan of a glass negative showing the back of a very old car inside some sort of barn, shed, or garage. Neither the car nor the shed looks to be in very good shape. The license plate says 'PENNA 1908' above the license plate number: 14183. There is large area of the image that cannot be seen because of a fibrous paper that is stuck to the emulsion.
Before Restoration
A scan of a glass negative showing the back of a very old car inside some sort of barn, shed, or garage. Neither the car nor the shed looks to be in very good shape. The license plate says 'PENNA 1908' above the license plate number: 14183. The large area of paper has been removed, revealing a bit more of the image and a smaller area where the image has been completely lost.
After Restoration

I was given this glass negative and decided to see if I could improve the state of it at all. From what I understand, it was in a basement flood and the paper envelope it was in was allowed to dry while still in contact with the emulsion. This is particularly problematic when the side of the envelope with the glue seam is facing the emulsion side of the negative. (In case this ever happens to you, remove the negatives from their sleeves *before* they get the chance to dry.)

It's never going to look great, but I think the only areas of loss were essentially gone before I started removing the paper. You can see the darker areas under the paper in the 'before' image coincide with the areas of full image loss on the 'after' image.

Given the time it took, it probably wasn't really worth the effort. But, I'd still call it a success.

Disclaimer: This isn't something I'd try unless you know what you're doing or it's a negative you don't care about.

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