Playing catch up again. I start off with great intentions but time seems to slip away. I’m still in the challenge and have been posting to Instagram daily as soon as I have uploaded my image. Maybe that is when I should add my post here but I always have more to say here and so it goes on.
I am finding these hints more challenging as time goes on. How do you interpret ‘last ever work’. If I took that literally I wouldn’t make any more work at all and I don’t think that is the intention. One person appeared just to scrawl ‘last ever work’ on a board and I don’t think that’s the intention either. I chose a slightly more challenging route which was to decide that this would be my last ever attempt to get some cyanotype test strips right for the work I had planned for the next day and I would go with whatever the outcome was.
Initially I had been using a ‘Bockingford 90lb’ paper. It is quite lightweight and warped when sensitised. Also, it didn’t seem as absorbent as some of the other papers I have used. I’m not sure what I bought it for, maybe book making but it doesn’t really work for cyanotype so, back to one of my favourites, Fabriano 50% cotton that I got from the sale shelf in Jacksons Art. Whilst I’ve made plenty of cyanotype prints, very few have been made using digital negatives and this is a whole new ball game as I’m finding out. I hadn’t really appreciates why you were advised to use a fairly low contrast photo until I found all of the highlights blown whilst the dark areas were over exposed. A custom curve for cyanotype in Photoshop is also advised and luckily there is one in Christina Z Anderson’s book on the subject, albeit for an Epson printer but a good starting point nonetheless. So this is where I am so far. Three more test strips, all sensitised with the same solution at the same time.
The first test was exposed at 5, 6 and 7 minutes. However, the church building is built from lighter stone than the school, so I did the same again with a larger section of the negative.
This suggested 5 minutes so the final test was done at 4, 5 and 6 minutes
I know this was supposed to be a challenge but I wasn’t prepared for it to drive me bonkers!
Anne Bryson Photography 