December 4: The Ladies on the Curling Rink at Montrave, Fife, 1896
The Ladies on the Curling Rink at Montrave, Fife, 1896 (LHG-3-91). A full plate (8.5×6.5 ins.) glass negative from the Lady Henrietta Gilmour Photographic Collection.
Lady Henrietta Gilmour is one of Scotland’s earliest women photographers. She photographed her friends, the animals on her farm, and events and views on her travels across Scotland and in the Far East.
Plate glass negatives were used from the 1870s until superseded by film negatives in the 1940s. They came in a range of set sizes to fit the cameras and used the dry collodion process which allowed the photographer to prepare plates, then exposed them on location and taken them back to the studio to be developed – a huge improvement on the wet collodion (used from 1860) which had to be prepared, exposed and developed at the location, before the plate dried.