Styles / Early processes

Calotype and paper-negative photography

1841–1865. England. Also called Talbotype or Paper-negative photography.

Where the lights stand

Sun: the sun, 4.3 m from the face, about 70° to the camera’s left, 207 cm above the eyes.
Reflector: a white reflector, 80 cm, 1 m from the face, about 55° to the camera’s right, 18 cm below the eyes.

To scale, from the render’s scene file. One way to get this light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.

Render of a grey clay head. Direct sun from one side raking across the face against a house wall, a reflector lifting the shadow side (the light of the courtyard, not the paper negative). — Rendered with this plan. Direct sun from one side raking across the face against a house wall, a reflector lifting the shadow side (the light of the courtyard, not the paper negative).

Render: a synthetic clay head made with MakeHuman, not a person, in Blender Cycles, 85 mm, f/5.6.

Portail milieu d'Aubeterre, by Gustave Le Gray, 1851 — Portail milieu d'Aubeterre

Gustave Le Gray, Portail milieu d'Aubeterre, 1851. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edward Pearce Casey Fund, 1991. Source: Portail milieu d'Aubeterre at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photographs made from paper negatives and printed mostly on plain salted paper, from Talbot's calotype of 1841 to the waxed-paper surveys of 1850s France and of British India into the 1860s. Exposures of seconds to minutes in strong sun outdoors render sitters, buildings, monuments, landscapes and still lifes as broad masses of light and shade rather than fine detail, and the paper's fibres soften every edge. Prints are matte, reddish to purplish brown, often faded to yellow-brown, and one negative could be printed again and again for books and albums.

Shoot sheet for your kit The photographs

How the look is made

Work outdoors in direct sun: place the sitter, the group or the facade where strong light falls from one side, and expose for seconds to minutes.
Compose in masses, not details: let large areas of light and deep shadow carry the picture. The texture is the blotchy mottle of paper fibres printed through the negative, strongest in skies, walls and shadows, never the fine, even grain of film or digital noise.
Pose people for a long hold that still looks natural: leaning on a wall, a table or a companion, eyes lowered or turned away, groups arranged like a genre painting.
Stand square-on to buildings, monuments and carved doorways, close enough to fill the frame, and let raking light model the stone.
Contact-print on plain salted paper in sunlight for a matte, warm reddish- to purple-brown image sunk into the paper; correct by hand on the negative, not on the print.
Make the picture repeatable: one negative, many prints, pasted into books, albums and survey portfolios.

Shoot sheet for your kit

Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.

Step 1

Light

Key: the sun, from the camera’s left, at the side, high, hard.

Key high: about 30–45° above eye level, angled down.

Shadow edges: Shadows with crisp outlines, cast by a small or distant light: direct sun, a bare flash, a spotlight.
Shadow depth: Dark shadows that still hold some detail (a high lighting ratio, about 4:1 to 8:1: the shadow side two to three stops darker).

How the style is lit

Direct sunlight outdoors, in a courtyard, garden or against a house wall, falling from one side so it rakes across faces, cloth, stone and straw; reflectors were probably used to lift the shadow side.
Open sun on a facade, portal or monument, the camera square-on so that carving and masonry are drawn in raking light and deep shadow.

This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. The set-up at the top of the page is the one we rendered, to scale. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.

Step 2

Lens and settings

Start at

50 mmf/21/8000 sISO 100

On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.

The style’s f/13 on Whole plate gives about the depth of field of f/2.1 on full frame.
Too bright for the shutter: stop down further or use an ND filter.

Then: 35–60 mm · f/8–f/22 · 10 s–10 min · ISO 0.002–0.02 on Whole plate, inferred from the gear and the look. Exposures are documented: about a minute in sun for Hill & Adamson (10 s to tens of minutes), 1–3 min for a calotype, 2–3 min in good light for waxed paper. Stops (landscape lenses near f/16) and ISO, worked out from those times, are estimates.

Focal length: Roughly the eye’s own perspective; no visible distortion.
Angle: The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.
Distance: Whole figures and their immediate surroundings.
Balance: The subject faces the lens; planes run parallel to the picture.
Duration: An unmoving scene, exposed slowly and carefully.

Step 3

Direct

Hold a pose for up to a minute that still looks natural: seated or leaning on a wall, a table or a tombstone, a hand on a book, a basket or a companion's shoulder, eyes lowered or turned away from the lens, faces calm. Groups gather close round a table or a shared task like a genre painting; working people hold the tools of their trade.

Head & gaze: Looking down, or eyes shut: inward, modest, asleep or praying. Eyes off the frame, past the camera or into the distance, as if lost in thought.
Arms & hands: Hands busy with a prop or a tool: flowers, a phone, a cup, a cigarette, an instrument, one’s own work.
Line & energy: Loose and unforced, as people stand and sit when they forget the camera, whether caught or coaxed by prompts.
Several people: People talking, playing, working or dancing together, absorbed in each other rather than the camera.
Without a pose: No people at all, or people so small or far off that their pose does not read (hands alone are Hands alone).
With the sitter: The sitter arranged and still, facing the camera.
The set-up: A scene staged and directed like a film still or a painting.

Step 4

Style the set

People wear their own clothes: dark coats and white neckcloths, silk dresses with lace collars and caps, or the striped skirts, aprons and head-cloths of a trade. Outdoors a hung cloth, a draped table, a chair and a book make a makeshift studio; buildings and landscapes are left as found.

How much is styled: Nothing dressed, made up, moved or added for the picture.

Step 5

Finish

Monochrome: A monochrome image tinted sepia, brown, selenium purple or cyanotype blue.
Colour: An overall yellow, orange or red cast. Lifted blacks and washed-out colour, like an old print.
Early processes: Warm-brown prints of the 19th century, made from negatives.
Texture: Film grain or noise you can see at normal size.
Post-production: Marks made by hand on the negative or the print.
Shown in: The book as the main form of the work. Prints for an album, a card or a frame at home.

Stay away from daguerreotype & direct positive, hyper-detailed, clean & noiseless, cool cast, black & white, full range, direct on-camera flash, snapshot, candid & unobserved, laughing, fast, full-body movement and shadowless.

Before you shoot it

Calotypes show real, identifiable people, among them children and the fishwives and fishermen of Newhaven, photographed by artists and sold as prints. Travel calotypes of Egypt and the Near East were made by European visitors for European buyers: do not restage local people as picturesque types in front of monuments. The waxed-paper views of India and Burma were made by men in East India Company service, Tripe on an official mission and for the Madras government, and many show places of worship and tombs that are still in use or revered, such as Buddhist pagodas, Hindu temples, mosques and the Taj Mahal: do not fake a period view of a real sacred site, do not use monks or worshippers as props, and do not present the colonial survey's view of these places as neutral. In short: show only invented sitters and buildings, never a real family, a known monument or a sacred site passed off as a period view, and never use worshippers or local people as picturesque props.

Photographs that define it

From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.

[Newhaven Fishwives], by Hill and Adamson (David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson), ca. 1845 — [Newhaven Fishwives]

Hill and Adamson, [Newhaven Fishwives], ca. 1845. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace, Harriette and Noel Levine, and Alexandra R. Marshall Gifts, 1997. Source: [Newhaven Fishwives] at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dumbarton Presbytery, by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, March 29, 1845 — Dumbarton Presbytery

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Dumbarton Presbytery, March 29, 1845. Art Institute of Chicago, Photography Associates Fund. Source: Dumbarton Presbytery at Art Institute of Chicago

Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson, by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1844 — Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson, 1844. Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Source: Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson at Art Institute of Chicago

The Misses Grierson, by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, c. 1845 — The Misses Grierson

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, The Misses Grierson, c. 1845. Art Institute of Chicago, Purchased with funds provided by Robin and Sandy Stuart. Source: The Misses Grierson at Art Institute of Chicago

The Haystack, by William Henry Fox Talbot, April 1844 — The Haystack

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Haystack, April 1844. Art Institute of Chicago, Edward E. Ayer Endowment in memory of Charles L. Hutchinson. Source: The Haystack at Art Institute of Chicago

Loch Katrine, by William Henry Fox Talbot, 1844 — Loch Katrine

William Henry Fox Talbot, Loch Katrine, 1844. Art Institute of Chicago, Photography Gallery Fund. Source: Loch Katrine at Art Institute of Chicago

Le Sphynx vu de Face, Egypte Moyenne, by Maxime Du Camp, 1849/51, printed 1852 — Le Sphynx vu de Face, Egypte Moyenne

Maxime Du Camp, Le Sphynx vu de Face, Egypte Moyenne, 1849/51, printed 1852. Art Institute of Chicago, Photography Gallery Fund. Source: Le Sphynx vu de Face, Egypte Moyenne at Art Institute of Chicago

With other styles

The opposite: Daguerreotype portraiture. Choose the daguerreotype for one unique, mirror-sharp, cool likeness made under a skylight; choose the calotype when the brief wants warm, matte, fibrous masses made in the sun and printed many times.

The opposite: Carte-de-visite studio portraits. The carte prints smooth albumen from glass and puts a small whole figure in a studio set; keep the calotype matte and fibrous, outdoors, closer to the sitter, and turn it on buildings and monuments as well as people.

Pairs with Pictorialism. Both give up fine detail for masses of tone and work the image by hand; borrow the calotype's hard sun and warm salt-print browns to give a pictorialist subject firmer shadows than mist allows. Pictorialists looked back to the calotype: J. Craig Annan's photogravures of Hill & Adamson's calotypes appeared in Stieglitz's Camera Work in 1905, 1909 and 1912, and Stieglitz twice reproduced Hill & Adamson's portrait of Anna Jameson there.

The opposite: Modernist architectural photography. Both model masonry with raking sun, but the modernist view takes an oblique corner and a clean, sharp black-and-white print; for the calotype stand square-on to an old portal and let warm brown masses and paper texture carry it.

Sources

Calotype, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calotype (introduced by Talbot in 1841; silver iodide paper, gallo-nitrate of silver, development; a minute or two in bright sunlight; contact prints on salted paper; paper fibres showing, less clear than the daguerreotype; negatives sometimes waxed; Hill & Adamson and the Edinburgh Calotype Club; English patent not applicable in Scotland)
Henry Fox Talbot, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fox_Talbot (English patent of February 1841; licence fees; Reading establishment of 1844 mass-producing salted paper prints; The Pencil of Nature illustrated with salted paper prints from calotype negatives; Talbot v. Laroche, 1854; patent not extended)
The Pencil of Nature, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pencil_of_Nature (six fascicles, 1844–1846; 24 pasted-in calotypes; plate list including Articles of China, The Open Door and The Haystack)
The Pencil of Nature, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267022 (1844–46, salted paper prints from paper negatives)
Hill & Adamson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Adamson (studio 1843–1848; about 3,000 photographs; Rock House on Calton Hill; Disruption Assembly portraits and painting completed 1866; Newhaven fishermen and fishwives; Adamson's death in 1848)
David Octavius Hill, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Octavius_Hill (portraits in the studio and outdoors, often in Greyfriars Kirkyard; Hill composing and lighting, Adamson handling the camera; prints faded under sunlight and were kept in albums; Dumbarton Presbytery, 1845)
The Calotype Process, University of Glasgow Library, Hill and Adamson Collection: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/ha/text/calotype.html (Whatman's Turkey Mill paper; sensitising and use within hours; outdoor exposures from ten seconds to tens of minutes, usually about a minute; virtually all taken out of doors, reflectors likely; Hill retouching negatives in pencil or ink; waxing; salted paper printing; rich browns tending to red or purple; fading)
Master Miller, Hill and Adamson, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/100836 (calotype prints 'rich in masses of form rather than sharp detail or tonal range'; around 2,500 calotypes; Disruption portraits)
The Misses Grierson, Hill and Adamson, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/223183 (slightly blurred image with a massing of light and dark forms; 'as Rembrandt's but improved', 1843; a pose that could be held while seeming natural)
Mission héliographique, Wikipédia (French): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_h%C3%A9liographique (1851 commission of the Commission des monuments historiques; Le Secq, Le Gray, Mestral and Baldus on paper negatives, Le Gray and Mestral on dry waxed paper, Bayard on albumen glass plates; images not published)
Gustave Le Gray, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Gray (waxing paper negatives before exposure for finer detail; treatise editions 1850–1854; pupils Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, Olympe Aguado and Maxime Du Camp)
Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_D%C3%A9sir%C3%A9_Blanquart-Evrard (1847 paper process; Imprimerie photographique, Lille, 1851–1855; albumen paper)
Le Sphynx vu de Face, Maxime Du Camp, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/144206 (salted paper print, 1849/51, printed 1852, plate 11 of the album Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie)
Vue du Divan et du Palais du Gouverneur, à Syout, Maxime Du Camp, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/287091 (1850, salted paper print from paper negative)
Le Quartier des Brotteaux après les inondations, Édouard Baldus, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283130 (June 1856, salted paper prints from paper negative)
Salt print, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_print (salt and silver nitrate; a printing-out process; dominant paper process from 1839 to about 1860; gold toning)
Photographic Prints, Preservation Self-Assessment Program, University of Illinois Library: https://psap.library.illinois.edu/format-id-guide/photoprint (salt print 1839–1860s; image in the paper fibres; matte; reddish brown untoned, purplish brown toned, yellowish brown or greenish yellow when faded)
Édouard Baldus, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Baldus (commissioned in 1851 for the Missions Héliographiques by the Historic Monuments Commission; wet and dry paper negatives as large as 10 × 14 inches; retouched negatives; composite of the cloister of St. Trophime, Arles, 1851)
Eugène Pelletan, Nadar, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266480 (1855–59, salted paper print from glass negative)
Landing Place, Railway Stores, Balaklava, Roger Fenton, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283158 (1855, salted paper print from glass negative)
Amerapoora: Shwe-doung-dyk Pagoda, Linnaeus Tripe, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/302650 (September 1–October 21, 1855, albumen silver print from waxed paper negative)
Linnaeus Tripe, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaeus_Tripe (East India Company army from 1838; chosen by Lord Dalhousie to accompany the official expedition to Ava, Burma, in 1855; official photographer to the Madras government from March 1857; photographs of previously unphotographed temples)
Taj Mahal, John Murray, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/282069 (ca. 1855, waxed paper negative)
The Chowk, John Murray, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283161 (1856–57, salted paper print from paper negative)
The Diwan-i Khas from the Mussaman Burj, Agra Palace, John Murray, Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266025 and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/266026 (1862–64, waxed paper negative with applied media, and an albumen silver print from paper negative)
John Murray (photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray_(photographer) (East India Company assistant surgeon from 1833; first principal of the Medical College at Agra; the calotype process at Agra in the 1850s)
Annan's Tests – The Art of the Photogravure, photogravure.com: https://photogravure.com/?p=4883 (J. Craig Annan's photogravures of Hill & Adamson's calotypes; prints sent to Stieglitz for Camera Work in 1905, 1909 and 1912; cites Annan, 'David Octavius Hill, R.S.A., 1802–1870', Camera Work no. 11, July 1905, p. 17)
Camera Work No. 11 (July 1905), digitised by Heidelberg University Library: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/camera_work1905_11 (the issue with Annan's essay on Hill; the page is behind a bot check, so its contents are taken from the photogravure.com citation)
Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson, Hill and Adamson, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/66252 (1844, salted paper print, Alfred Stieglitz Collection; paper negatives as well as prints; pictorialists around 1900 admired 'the grainy textures and rich tonality'; Stieglitz twice published this print in Camera Work)
Loch Katrine, William Henry Fox Talbot, Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/144503 (1844, salted paper print, plate X of the album Sun Pictures in Scotland, 1845)
The Calotype Process, University of Glasgow Library, Hill and Adamson Collection: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/files/special/ha/text/calotype.html (negatives exposed sometimes for as little as ten seconds, usually closer to a minute, sometimes for tens of minutes; about a minute for an outdoor portrait on a good day; negatives contact-printed, so the same size as the print)
The Silver Sunbeam, John Towler (New York: Joseph H. Ladd, 1864), chapter XXIX, Negatives on Paper, CoOL edition: https://cool.culturalheritage.org/albumen/library/monographs/sunbeam/chap29.html (Le Gray's wax-paper process: two or three minutes in a good light, ten to fifteen minutes in ordinary light; Humbert de Molard's wet paper three to thirty seconds)
Early Photographic Processes: Calotype, EdinPhoto: https://edinphoto.org.uk/1_early/1_early_photography_-_processes_-_calotype.htm (exposures of around 1 to 3 minutes for a calotype; a two-minute exposure at f/8 may be required on a sunny day)
History of photographic lens design, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_design (a 150 mm Petzval lens on Voigtländer's conical metal camera for circular daguerreotypes, 1841; at f/3.6 the first wide-aperture portrait lens; Chevalier's landscape lens with an f/16 stop)