Hell yeah! It's an alternative photography process. You mix up a chemical emulsion and paint it on some watercolor paper (or fabric or wood or anything porous). Then you can arrange a composition on the paper with stuff like plants (what we focus on for this class) but other stuff like have or loose knit fabrics, objects with neat shapes, whatever. You can also take photos or do digital design and print out negatives on transparencies.
Once you're ready to go, you expose them in the sun! There's a lot of different factors in how long you expose them for–time of day, time of year, cloud cover, the thickness of your design materials, the pH of your paper or fabric, and a bunch of other stuff I know I haven't learned about yet. In my class we watch everyone's prints and I explain the different phases you can see them go through. I talk about what changes I'm looking for and factors I'm considering. I'll tell each person when I think theirs is done and what has led me to that decision. It gets easier with practice, but I always tell people it's a great art form for "recovering perfectionists" because I'm always learning something new.
Once they're exposed, you just rinse in a plain water bath and you get that awesome blue. This was about 20 minutes after rinsing, but they continue to get deeper in color over the next day or so as the pigments oxidize.
The chemicals used in cyanotype are very safe! Safer than traditional photo development, even B&W. I never wear gloves, even.
You can get started with minimal knowledge–all you really need to read is the directions on the back of the bottle. To lean the intricacies obviously takes a lot longer, mostly just experience and practice. Beyond the basics, when I have a question I'll Google. Picked up some cool tidbits on Reddit. But mostly I just experiment!
It was actually all adults except for Miriam, but that wasn't her print–her dad made that one. 😅 Hers is in the row below on the right.
I love this, reminds me of a bonfire. What materials did you use/what was your process if you didn't mind sharing?
Several people used hibiscus flowers and the conditions and timing were perfect to show off the translucency.
Aside from the paper prints we do little drawstring bags, those ended up neat today as well. Sometimes it's trickier to get a good exposure on them.
Thank you :)
Do it do it do it!
No quarantine. Just like flying with a pet from one US state to another. The rescue will pay for extra costs if there are any, but I didn't have any with my flight.
A volunteer from the receiving rescue met me at the airport when I landed and picked him up before our luggage even came out on the carousel.
Puerto Rico has far more rescue animals than can be adopted by the local population, and being an island it's much harder to transport them to other rescues with more space or even who already have an adopter lined up for the animal. It's not feasible for volunteers to regularly transport them.
If you are visiting PR, you can sign up to escort a cat or small dog on your return flight. A volunteer meets you at the departure airport with the animal in a carrier, and another meets you at arrival to pick them up. It's a very easy process since PR is a US territory. The rescue pays for any costs associated with bringing the animal as a carry on, and you get an adorable travel buddy.
This is a little guy named Halo that I escorted a few years ago 🥲 I still think about him and am so happy I got to help him to his new life.
Ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Don't bathe in it but I've never had any irritation from splashes on my skin that I wash off, or from rinsing with no gloves (the final rinse is in plain water). Don't mix it with a lot of acid (not sure why you would) because then it makes cyanide gas, but in the process of making cyanotypes, very very safe!
I've never used enlargers for this process. They're exposed with UV light so you'd have to use a UV bulb with it and from my brief Google, there's varying success. When I do photos, I print the negatives full size on transparency film and expose in the sun.