Pure Silver
- 29
- Parts
- 230
- Pages
- 4
- Levels
- 434
- Hours
- 7,390
- Citations
0 / 230 lessons completed
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What this course is
Section titled “What this course is”A photograph on silver is a chemical event that you can understand. Light knocks an electron loose in a crystal of silver bromide; a few atoms of silver gather where it struck; a developer, a reducing agent held at the right pH, finds those atoms and grows them into a grain you can see; a fixer dissolves the crystals that were never struck; a wash carries the fixer away; and what remains is metallic silver in gelatin, arranged as the picture. Every choice a photographer makes in the darkroom — the developer, its dilution, the temperature, the agitation, the paper, the toner — is a choice about that chain of events.
Pure Silver teaches the chain. It is a course in photographic chemistry, in the physics of light and silver, and in the craft of turning both into pictures, written for people who love traditional photography and want to understand it rather than follow recipes. You build a pinhole camera and calculate its optics. You learn the chemistry of a film developer well enough to formulate one, then formulate one and measure what it does. You make your own light-sensitive paper and your own emulsion. You build the instruments that let you measure your process, and the darkroom equipment that lets you print. You end with a portfolio and a chemistry report that explains, from photon capture to finished print, what happened.
Who it is for
Section titled “Who it is for”You do not need a chemistry education beyond school, or any electronics or woodworking experience. You need to like photography, be willing to work carefully with chemicals, and want to know why. The course teaches the chemistry it needs from first principles and stays at that level until it has earned the right to go deeper.
Three tracks, one course
Section titled “Three tracks, one course”Almost every part of the course develops three things at once.
Science. Chemistry, photochemistry, optics, materials and sensitometry: what is physically and chemically happening, explained before it is used.
Craft. Building the camera, preparing the emulsion, formulating the chemistry, processing the film, constructing the darkroom equipment, and printing.
Art. Exposure, composition, previsualisation, print decisions and, in the end, a portfolio of work you can explain.
The four levels
Section titled “The four levels”Level 1 — Foundation
How light and silver met: the history, the laboratory discipline and the chemistry needed to understand everything that follows.
Level 2 — Practitioner
Make a camera, expose film, formulate and understand the processing chain, and print with intent.
Level 3 — Advanced
Manufacture emulsions, measure the process with instruments you build, and control the darkroom quantitatively.
Level 4 — Specialist
Alternative and historical processes, experimental chemistry, failure analysis and the portfolio that demonstrates the whole chain.
Two ways to use it
Section titled “Two ways to use it”Learn. Work through the parts in order. Each opens with what you will make or measure, and each ends with something real: a negative, a print, a working device, a measured result.
Refer. Come back to the Formulary, the chemical encyclopaedia, the glossary, the process atlas, the troubleshooting atlas, the standard operating procedures and the laboratory planner for years after you finish. They are written to be consulted, not merely completed.