Having built an exposure unit for cyanotype prints, it was time to get it dialled in and start experimenting.
The first question was how long? How long to expose the paper to get a decent print?
I started, as you must with cyanotypes, with some leaves, with exposure times ranging from two to ten minutes. The ideal time for each print is different, but this gave me a useful starting point for the top shelf.
Next I experimented with some double exposures. I had some negatives which I'd used a previous summer for Postcard Club. I laid these on top of the coated paper and then added some grasses. These were particularly successful and something I'll pursue next summer.
Testing out the unit with small-scale prints was the obvious thing to do, both cost and time-wise. But what to do with all the small prints? I trimmed them down to postcard size and sent them out to Postcard Club subscribers. I think this is where Postcard Club is such good value — something interesting and unique popping through your door every month. Only a tenner. Bargain.
A selection of the cards that went out below.
The prints you can make with cyanotype are hugely varied, but one variant I like a lot is making prints of glassware. You get an X-ray-like image of a glass or bottle.
I played around with some wine glasses and vases, filling them with different grasses and flowers to make still lifes. These were very successful and are something I'll revisit next year.
The first image below shows the arrangement of the vase and grasses alongside the final print.
These next images I actually printed in London and framed up in Finland. They're photographs of my wife's great-grandparents and their friends, taken from glass plate negatives we found a couple of summers ago. The frames are old windows I took from an abandoned summer house in the forest.
I plan to complete a series of nine; these first few are really to prove the concept.
I've been thinking about these images since we found the negatives. There is a mixture of formal poses, like you see in many photographs from the period, but there are also some wonderfully relaxed and casual images. They are an amazing snapshot of life on Finland's western coast circa 1910.
That's all the good stuff, but the thing about experimenting and doing something new is that it doesn't always work. Let's have a look at some bits that didn't work out.
I've seen someone on Instagram doing cyanotypes on birch bark. The summer studio is in the forest and we have lots of birch trees. The firewood pile is full of birch that we cut down three summers ago. Peeling the bark is a pain, so I thought, why peel it? Why not just coat the cut log and add a sculptural element to the print?
I tried it and it didn't work, so I researched a bit and hit upon coating the log with gelatin before the cyanotype solution. This didn't work either. Neither attempt yielded any print on the wood.
I had some success getting it to work on birch timber, using some offcuts of tongue and groove left over from the exposure unit. I laid down some gelatin before the cyanotype solution and was able to get an image on the wood. Not with the crispness you get on paper, but an image of sorts. It's an interesting effect worth exploring more next summer.
The final experiment of the summer was on scraps of old wallpaper. Again, a similar treatment with gelatin first. The results were poor. The image below is by some way the best and, honestly, it's not great.
With more time and trial and error, I think you could get something to work, but I'm not sure it's the best application of cyanotype. It seems to detract somewhat from the things that make cyanotype prints brilliant.
All in all, though, it was a great summer of exploring a new medium and laying the groundwork for some more considered works next year.