Writer and photography / Angelo Taibi

Angelo Taibi digs out a cyanotype formula to make the prints less contrasty.

The cyanotype process generally produces contrasty prints and for this reason the use of a low-contrast negative is often recommended. But, by reading the recipe of an old book of photography I found out that a print of low contrast can be obtained by slightly changing the conventional cyanotype method.

In the Book of Photography edited by Paul N. Hasluck (1905) the Ferro-prussiate Process is described on page 180:

"Prepare two solutions: (a) Citrate of iron and ammonia 1 oz., water 4 oz.; (b) Potassium ferricyanide 1 oz., water 4 oz. Coat any tolerably pure paper of fine texture with solution (a), using for this purpose either a broad flat brush or a tuft of wool.

The paper prints very slowly. The details should be brought out fully, and the dark parts should have a bronzed appearance. When a fairly dark brown image appears, (b) solution is applied by flowing it over the print. The result will be a picture in Prussian blue. The print is then passed through a weak solution of citric acid, washed for a few minutes in water, and hang up to dry in gentle heat."

It is worth noting that the method to prepare the two solutions is similar to the traditional cyanotype formula (although solution b is generally more diluted) but the coating and developing processes are very different! I then decided to follow these "new" instructions to produce my umpteenth cyanotype print by coating the paper with solution (a) and, after exposure, developing it with solution (b). After rinsing it in water, I got a low-contrast picture in prussian blue!

Figure 1: The "bronzed appearance" of the print immediately after exposure to ultraviolet light.
Figure 2: The final result using this method.	Figure 3: A cyanotype print obtained with the standard method.

The print was then "developed" with solution (b) by using a brush in the same fashion of the coating process. It is important to always use different brushes for the two stages.

As an example, figure 1 shows the "bronzed appearance" of the print immediately after exposure to ultraviolet light. The print was then "developed" with solution (b) by using a brush in the same fashion of the coating process. It is important to always use different brushes for the two stages otherwise contamination occurs if the whole process is repeated, even after thorough washing of the brushes! Once the print appears fully developed (it is a matter of seconds), the usual washing procedure is applied. Figure 2 shows the final result and comparison with figure 3 – a cyanotype print obtained with the standard method – demonstrates a significant reduction in contrast.

I always use the standard cyanotype formula and also for these experiments solution (a) was prepared with 10 g ferric ammonium citrate in 50 ml water and solution (b) with 4 g potassium ferricyanide in 50 ml water. Furthermore, both the conventional and the alternative prints have been obtained with the same exposure time.

I believe this method is especially interesting for taking control of the development process, since the use of the brush allows one to apply the solution locally and with different dilutions. The cyanotype process works on the principle that ferric salts are reduced to ferrous salts when exposed to ultraviolet light so we can play with the potassium ferricyanide solution to form Prussian blue.

By the way, the Book of Photography considers the ferro-prussiate process "very unsuitable for general work" … because … "it gives white lines on a blue ground only" so, on the next page it describes Cyanotypes (?!) "to have a white ground and dark lines". The author actually describes the Pellet process that is also known as positive cyanotype!

Angelo Taibi is one of the artists represented on this site.

Writer and photography / Malin Fabbri

The myth: A pinhole camera cannot be used to make cyanotypes! Malin Fabbri confirms the myth.

It has been said that the exposure times for a pinhole camera are just too long to make a cyanotype print.True or false?

For testing this theory we used a bucket pinhole camera with f/295 hole and exposure time of around 1-5 minutes when using ordinary black & white silver gelatin paper – depending of course on the strength of the light. Where the black & white paper would normally sit, a coated cyanotype paper was inserted, and the camera aimed at the garden.

Exposing the paper for 8 hours – a very long exposure time by any standards – did not result in the slightest imprint on the paper. Not a shadow.

A fresh paper was inserted. This time the exposure time was weeks instead of hours. Five weeks to be exact – in the Scandinavian summer time, when the sun shines for most of the day and most of the night. This resulted in some unimpressive streaks on the paper. See image on left.

Image above: Cyanotype after 5 weeks of exposure in-camera.	Image above: Cyanotype after 6 months exposure in a pinhole camera.

Not being disheartened, another paper was inserted, and exposed for six month. For half a year the pinhole was sitting there, letting in light through it’s little hole, exposing the paper. The result? After the rinse, a slight blue patch showed in one corner, but certainly nothing worth the effort. See above right.

True or false? The conclusion: True! To combine pinhole and cyanotype, the in-camera method cannot be used. Instead, make a negative using the pinhole camera, and use the negative to print a cyanotype.

Reader contributions

After the article was published a few readers came forward with their experiences. Thank you. Here is Sarah Warwicks experiment.

Sarah Warwick's Pinhole camera used to make a cyanotype

The cyanotype made with the pinhole camera

Writer and photography / Filipe Alves

Cyanotypes are usually blue. Or toned into a sepia color. Filipe shows us how to get both blue and sepia into the same cyanotype.

Image right: 3 possible “primary colors” giving a very limited range of hues.

The cyanotype process is a great way to create monochromatic prints that show that wonderful Prussian blue, or, using tea and other chemicals: purple, and brown prints may be created. Although it has been used only as a single layer process: one coating, one exposure, one print.

Image right: Brown cyanotype made with negative created from Magenta channel, and blue cyanotype with negative created from Cyan channel in CMY image.

Just as in the gum bichromate process, several coatings may be applied to the print, and as there are some different colors that can be achieved with the cyanotype process (not color splitting), a cyanotype can be made to reproduce a 2 or even 3 color print, using only cyanotype chemistry and a set of previously prepared negatives.

Ingredients

• Ferric ammonium citrate
• Potassium ferricyanide
• Tannic acid
• Sodium bicarbonate or other bleaching agent.

This method applies some of the principles of gum bichromate.

1A set of negatives, one for each color used, although color reproduction is quite limited, some creative effects can be achieved.

2Preshrinking (if you are worried about image alignment).

3Washing baths.

Image right: made with 2 layers, first brown, second blue.

Preparing the Negatives

As the color range available in cyanotypes is quite limited, to create suitable negatives one should increase greatly the saturation of the image, so differences in color will be visible in the final image.

To get the channels CMY, try the multichannel mode in Photoshop. I use M for the Brown color, C for the Blue color and Y for the Yellowish color.

If you don’t want to worry about calibration curves, overexposure, or under exposure, you can apply a half tone screen to your negatives, it will decrease resolution but will make high contrast negatives that will result in all shades possible.

The colors

The cyanotype process does not really have much colors available.The basic color is the Prussian blue, bleaching it, a very light yellow can be achieved, and toning this yellow with tannic acid will result on a sort of reddish brown or a slightly different tone if pirogallic acid is used. Probably all other darker tones are just mixes of these three.

But the chemistry of this process, and the several baths used to change the appearance of the print force us to have the colors applied to the print in a specific order:

Image right: Another example of 2 color cyanotype.

Making a two color print – brown and blue

Image right: Different colors other than blue, that cane be achieved and combined with each other. Toning with tea will give a yellower result than with pure tannic acid, but it will tint the paper.

1Brown color
Coat the paper, expose with negative for the brown color, wash, apply toning bath, bleach the print, apply wash bath.

2Blue color
Recoat the paper, expose with negative for the blue color, wash.

Making a three color print – brown, yellow and blue

The 3 color print is in fact very hard to achieve, as the yellow is very sensitive to tannic acid and will easily become as brown as the brown layer, and it is of very light color.

1Brown color
Coat the paper, expose with negative for the brown color, wash, apply toning bath, apply wash bath.

2Yellow color
Recoat the paper, expose with negative for yellow color, wash, bleach the print (in this step, the toned component will become brown, and the other will become yellow), apply wash bath.

3Blue color
Recoat the paper, expose with negative for the blue color, wash.

Making a two color print – black and blue

1 Black color
Coat the paper, expose with negative for the black color, wash, apply toning bath, apply wash bath.

2Blue color
Recoat the paper, expose with negative for the blue color, wash.

Image right: A small test with Red-Brown and Yellow, note how unexposed parts get tinted.

Single color print

This method is also useful to combine a higher contrast and lower contrast exposure and increase the dynamic range of the final print. When you’re happy with the result, you can bleach and tone as you like…

Washing the print is very important after toning or bleaching, or that effect will pass on to the next layer of the print.

Toning with tannic acid will give a reddish hue even to the unexposed highlights of the image, reducing the overall contrast and brilliance of the final image.

Filipe Alves is a Portuguese Architect and 3D artist. With a passion for photography, astrophotography and holography. See his website.

Writer and photography / Balazs Sprenc

Balazs Sprenc has managed to make cyanotypes – negative prints – by placing the paper directly into a Graflex Speed Graphic (4×5″) and a Russian wooden FKD (5×7″) camera.

Traditionally cyanotype prints supposed to be used to make positive prints from negatives. Once I found some pictures browsing the internet where cyanotype papers were used as paper negatives. They were exposed in the camera for hours, then the pictures were scanned and inverted (I believe that those cyanotypes were not washed, only exposed and scanned). I really liked the results and decided to give it a try too. I was also curious what happens after washing the in-camera cyanotypes. The first results were disappointing, although the pictures were exposed for 2-3 hours in bright sunlight, everything disappeared after washing the print.

Picure #1: Apocalypse Now (Graflex Speed Graphic, Kodak Ektar 127mm, 6 hours exposure, 9×12 cm cyanotype negative, inverted)

After that I was experimenting with longer exposure times (6-10 hours) and chose the brightest natural subject available: the sun.


The second picture was taken with a Russian wooden camera. Starting at around 10 am the sun was shining so strong that the paper was burnt but fortunately the camera and the film holder survived the accident.

Picture #2: The story of Icarus (FKD, Industar-51, 12 hours exposure, 13×18 cm cyanotype negative, inverted)

Picture #3: Boat & pier (Graflex Speed Graphic, Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm, 6 hours exposure, 9×12 cm cyanotype negative, inverted)

I also tried to take pictures of less bright subjects with much less success. In most of the cases I could see a picture before washing the cyanotype negative but it disappeared after the washing process or could hardly be recognized (picture #3-4).

Picture #4: Roofs & chimneys (Graflex Speed Graphic, Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm, 10 hours exposure, 9×12 cm cyanotype negative, inverted)

Tips & tricks for making in-camera cyanotypes

I wouldn’t say I’m an expert of making in-camera cyanotype negative prints but I learned a few things during my experiments:

• try it only in very bright light conditions,
• use extremely long exposure times,
• use the widest aperture setting of your lens,
• look for high contrast subjects,
• scan your exposed cyanotype negative before washing because you might get only a blank picture after the washing process,
• try different papers,
• be very careful if you compose the sun’s path into your picture, it can burn your paper and you can easily damage your film holder (picture #5-6) or even your camera.

Summary of in-camera cyanotypes

In-camera cyanotype negative prints will most probably never become popular because:

• you need extremely long exposure times,
• results are quite unpredictable,
• negatives do not contain too many details,
• you can not make positive prints from cyanotype negatives (unless you scan and invert them using a computer).

Picture #5-6: An unsuccessful attempt with burnt paper and film holder.

This article was written by Balazs Sprenc, a Hungarian artist who likes working with cyanotypes, argentotypes, lumen prints and loves the smell of polaroid chemicals. See Balazs Sprenc website for more info.

Writer and photography / Amber Reumann Engfer

After experimenting Amber Reumann Engfer has found a way to create a cyanotype on a fiber based gelatin silver paper (black and white paper).

Spending years in the darkroom, I began to become familiar with both Resin coated (RC) and fiber based papers. Resin coated papers are coated with a layer of plastic resin (also known as a light sensitive emulsion), therefore repelling liquids. The glossy finish added to a paper will also reject the application of a liquid. Considering RC and glossy papers refuse the absorption of liquids, I knew they would not be ideal for this purpose.

Realizing the paper used for this process must be able to absorb the iron salts found in cyanotype, I chose to experiment with Illford Multigrade Matte fiber paper. Not only is this the paper I most commonly use, but a matte fiber paper lacks any sort of glazed finish; thus allowing for saturation in the fibers.

The experimentation came by applying cyanotype to an exposed and fully processed matte fiber based photograph.

Due to the fact that black and white photographic paper is ultra sensitive to light, the gelatin silver printing process must come first. After a piece of photographic paper goes through the development and drying process (see gelatin silver process), it can now be exposed to light without affecting the printed image.

While applying cyanotype to the processed photograph, I found the fiber based paper provides great absorbency. As you would naturally apply cyanotype to any other paper or material (see cyanotype process), it can now be absorbed into the fiber paper with remarkable results. Over exceeding my expectations, I discovered photographic matte fiber paper works just as well for cyanotype as any other.

The detail of a photographic image helps gives depth and a wide range of tonality when combining cyanotype. Working from an already established photograph gives a backdrop for an overlay of cyanotype. As seen in the examples, I’ve chosen to only paint in certain areas, using the photographic image as an outline.

Experimentation in the darkroom and using UV rays led to a unique combination of gelatin silver and cyanotype in Amber’s work. Silver gelatin cyanotypes has captured the attention and curiosity of viewers, many of whom have not considered combining these two processes.

Writer / Sarah van Keuren

The chapter called “Cyanotype” of Sarah Van Keuren’s book “A Non-Silver Manual: Cyanotype, Vandyke Brown, Palladium & Gum Bichromate with instructions for making light-resists including pinhole photography”.

Read the previous section of this book.

In England in 1842, just three years after the official invention of photography, Sir John Herschel coined the word ‘cyanotype’ (cyan from the Greek for blue and type meaning print) for a process he invented in order to make copies of his astronomical calculations. His friend Anna Atkins learned the process from him and in 1843 produced a volume of photograms of British algae that is now recognized as the first photographic book. Looked down upon in the 19th century as a vulgar means of cheap reproduction, the blues and other hues of cyanotype are now treasured for their vibrancy and permanence.

My grandmother, over one hundred years ago, learned about the masterpieces of European painting through cyanotypes (contact-printed from view camera negatives) that were distributed to her high school class. Her set of cyanotypes, still in excellent condition, was glued into several notebooks and surrounded by her handwritten notes. It must have been a shock for her when eventually she saw the paintings in color. Some of these early reproductions are mournfully appealing in their fine blue complexity.
The cyanotype process is based on the fact that upon exposure to sunlight or other actinic light, ferric ammonium citrate, a light-sensitive iron salt, is reduced to the ferrous state and turns blue in the presence of another iron salt, potassium ferricyanide.

Part A: The first part of the cyanotype solution is ferric ammonium citrate. (see under ArtChemicals.com in “Resources”). This iron salt is not especially toxic and was in fact prescribed long ago as a dietary iron supplement. The kind that we use is a bright green, almost chartreuse, powder that should come in a light-proof brown jar (or be stored in darkness) with a tight-fitting lid to prevent moisture from turning the hydrophilic light green powder into a sticky and, later, hardened dark green glob.

To prepare this part of the solution, pour 8 ounces of distilled water into a wide-mouthed container. Carefully spoon 50 grams (a little less than 2 ounces) of the powdered ferric ammonium citrate into a paper ‘boat’ on a scale and then pour the iron salts into the distilled water slowly, stirring as you pour. After a week or so a moldy scum will begin to form on this solution. In the early stages, it can be ignored with no ill effects in printing. Later it can be lifted or strained out of the solution. You can prevent the mold from getting started in the first place by adding a few drops of formaldehyde to the solution, but formaldehyde is toxic and, unless it is already on hand for other purposes, it might be wiser to do without it in a home studio and to strain the solution instead.

Part B: The second part of the solution is potassium ferricyanide which turns blue where it is in contact with ferrous ammonium citrate. Since potassium ferricyanide (not to be confused with potassium ferrocyanide) is a commonly used bleach for black-and-white films and prints, it can be bought at well-stocked photography stores or ordered via the internet or by phone (see “Resources”). This chemical is caustic and potentially more toxic than the ferric ammonium citrate. It should not be combined with acid because cyanide gas could be released. There are varying opinions among chemists and safety experts as to whether cyanide gas is released during the exposure to actinic light of a surface sensitized with cyanotype chemistry. Most think that it is not a problem, but to be on the safe side, step back when opening a contact frame in which a cyanotype has been exposed and do not inhale the fumes that float off the hot print.
You now have the two components of the cyanotype process which, when stored separately, will last a few years. However, if you combine the two components, the complete solution is useable for a day at most. I store my A and B solutions in recycled plastic bottles with dispenser tops. I opaque the bottles with black photographic tape and put a patch of white tape over the black on which I write the name of the chemical, a big A or a big B, and the date each solution was prepared.

To summarize:

Part A: 50 grams ferric ammonium citrate in 8 ounces (236 ml) distilled water
optional: add a few drops of 37% formaldehyde to prevent mold

Part B: 35 grams potassium ferricyanide in 8 ounces (236 ml) distilled water

Combine parts A & B in equal amounts when you’re ready to use it.
Use all of the complete solution within 12 hours or less.

Printing Surfaces

Cyanotype prints well on organic materials such as cotton, silk, linen, mulberry, and wood. It prints weakly, if at all, on synthetic materials. Contrast and sharpness vary depending on the surface of the material. A soft, unsized cotton paper such as BFK Rives will absorb a lot of the solution and, if given enough exposure, can produce a tonally rich print. On such a surface, apply the solution liberally and gently to avoid raising little tufts of fiber that could lift off your print during development and washing, leaving a snowstorm of white dots on your image. Harder, less absorbent surfaces, such as Arches Platine or Strathmore 500, require less solution and render sharper detail. No added sizing is needed for any of these papers.

Preparing to Print

Before coating paper with cyanotype chemistry, place your light-resist upon the sheet of printing paper and lightly pencil its corners so that you know the boundaries of your image area. Or, since it is not necessary to adhere to a rectangular or square format, place the negative transparency beneath the printing paper on a light table and sketch the area or shapes that you wish to render in cyanotype. Try to avoid touching the image area of your paper, especially very smooth papers such as Platine or hot-press Strathmore 500, because greasy fingerprints can repel the cyanotype solution that you will apply.

Keeping Notes

It is my practice to write notes with an HB pencil along the edges of a print, usually on the image side so that I don’t have to keep turning the print over to refer to them. Beginning in the lower left corner I note the kind of paper I am using, whether or not it has been preshrunk, and the title of the negative (with date if possible). Then I write down the first process to be applied to the paper. A typical note might read:

1) cyanotype in sun 5 minutes around noon 6/21/08

It is only by keeping careful notes that you can hope to repeat an image. During the printing process I feel I could never forget what I have done, but a week later it is difficult to recall if the cyanotype that printed so well, (now under hardened gelatin sizing and 5 layers of gum), was exposed for 5 or 10 minutes. If you can discipline yourself to keep notes, you will learn from every print you make and avoid repeating mistakes, wasting materials, and becoming discouraged.

Preparing to Coat Paper

When you are ready to apply the cyanotype solution, tape the corners of your printing paper to a clean, dry, smooth surface so that the paper doesn’t slide around. Drafting tape is ideal because it releases easily and will not tear the paper. Masking tape can serve the same purpose if you reduce its tack by repeatedly touching it to your finger or some other surface so that it doesn’t pull off paper fibers when you remove the tape. When coating a thin paper that will curl upon itself and possibly mar itself as it dries, tape the paper to a piece of glass or plexi that can be slipped into the drying rack (or if you are drying it on a line, weight the lower corners with clothespins or make some other arrangement). When coating thin cloth or porous rice paper, tape the material to glass or plexi to prevent contamination of —and possibly from—the drying racks.

Combine the A and B parts of the cyanotype solution using the minimum amount you think you will need for this printing session so you don’t waste any. More can be mixed quickly if needed. In a small graduated cylinder, combine the 2 parts of the cyanotype solution. Five milliliters of each chemical mixed together should be enough to coat 8˝ x 10˝ areas on 4 sheets of paper, depending on the paper’s absorbency. The complete solution can be poured into a shallow container that will accommodate a brush.

Brushing on Cyanotype Solution

Dip a clean dry brush (any kind of brush as long as no metal comes in contact with the chemicals) into the greenish-yellow liquid, charging it fairly liberally, and apply the solution where you intend to sensitize the paper. In a class situation do not brush the solution all the way to the edges of the paper because then it tends to creep onto the back of the sheet, which contaminates the coating area and drying screens (or clothespins) as well as your fingers. Remember that even dry chemicals can offset onto your always slightly moist fingers and from your fingers they can offset again into your eyes, mouth, food, etc. Having a chemical-free border gives you a margin of safety, as well as space for notes, signature, etc. If you wish to have blue to the edges of your paper, you can print on a larger piece of paper with clear borders and then tear or cut it down to the blue when the print is finished and dried. Or if you are using a paper with special edges that must be blue you can tape the paper to larger sheet of glass or plexi that you put in the drying area. Please carefully clean the glass or plexi when done and return it to its home.

Use a dry sponge brush to soak up excess liquid you may have brushed onto your paper; otherwise, your final print might be streaky with white patches. Orange crystals of potassium ferricyanide form as puddles of excess solution dry and mask actinic light, preventing it from creating Prussian blue on your paper. The result can be a white crystalline pattern, like frost on a window, just where you may have intended the richest blue to print. Perhaps you will find that you actually like this effect and will puddle cyanotype solution intentionally at times. Subtle puddling of cyanotype chemicals may be responsible for variations in the blue intensity of prints that have been given identical exposure times.

Dry the paper in darkness, with circulating air if possible. After about 10 minutes, go over both sides of the paper with a hairdryer. Avoid touching the coated surface with your fingers. The paper is dry if it looks flat, doesn’t feel cool on the back, and flexes easily with a slight crackling sound. If the paper is not dry, your negative could be stained or bleached by the still damp cyanotype solution (potassium ferricyanide does bleach silver in addition to making Prussian blue). Try to expose coated paper soon after the brushed-on solution is dry, but, if necessary, it can be stored longer in low humidity. If there has been a delay in exposure of coated paper under humid conditions or if the paper is not completely dry, lavender tints may appear in image highlights and contrast may diminish. Often the lavender tints disappear as the cyanotype dries.

Exposure

For printing by inspection, hinge one side of your negative to the sensitized paper with 2 small pieces of clear tape so you can lift the negative to check the exposure (like turning a page in a book) without losing registration.

Cyanotype usually requires considerably more actinic light than the other processes described in this manual. My favorite actinic light source is the sun. It is free, clean, powerful, relatively safe, and fun to use. The best times for making sun exposures year round (at least in Pennsylvania) are between 10am and 3pm — and later into the afternoon in the summer months. An efficient exposure is achieved if you position your contact frame like a solar panel so that the sun’s rays are perpendicular to the printing paper and travel the shortest distance through the glass of the contact frame. However, if you are using a windowsill you must leave the contact frame flat. Never risk the calamity of a contact frame falling out of a window!

It is a waste of time and energy to use tungsten photofloods to expose cyanotypes. Their predominant wavelength is yellow and cyanotype does not react to yellow light. What’s worse, the heat from a photoflood may crack the glass of the contact frame. Unfiltered blacklight bulbs are cool slow sources of actinic light. If you can find one these days, an old-fashioned 275w sunlamp bulb works also but takes even longer.

A pulsed-xenon or mercury vapor bulb in a platemaker (primarily intended to expose lithographic plates) is a powerful actinic light source but is not really intended for long cyanotype exposures (and, in the process, generates ozone that should be vented). The very expensive bulb may overheat and rupture unless given a chance to cool periodically.

Don’t use an old-fashioned carbon arc unless you have very good ventilation. Potentially lethal carbon monoxide is released by the burning charcoal.

Exposure times with all of these light sources depend on the density of the negative and can vary greatly. A sufficiently exposed cyanotype should look grossly overexposed and solarized before development. If you sit outside and watch a bit of cyanotype on paper (that is brushed beyond the border of the negative) respond to the actinic light of the sun, you will see the greenish-yellow cyanotype coating turn aqua-green immediately. The coating then turns deep blue. If you stopped exposing at this point, removed the negative, and submerged the paper in water, most of the cyanotype solution would probably wash off the image area and, at most, you might be left with a faint blue border around your image. A strong deep blue print results when the most open parts of the negative, that are going to print the darkest blues, have solarized to light silvery purple or light greenish gray or even beige, depending on the kind of paper used. What will end up as the deepest blue areas should look lighter than the surrounding printed-out tones.

If you are in the habit of using a 21-step film scale in your margin and wish to print to step 11, expose until you see tones printed out through step 17 before developing in water where it will lose about 6 steps.

When exposing through continuous-tone film it is important to check underneath the film for signs of solarization rather than going by the color of the sensitized paper that is not covered by the negative. To give an example, when you’re exposing a cyanotype using a film such as sheet Tri-X, you need to give twice as much exposure to get maximum density in the open parts of the negative as you do in the margins because of the inherent density of the film base plus the unavoidable chemical fogging that occurs on continuous-tone film. This extra density is referred to as film-base-plus-fog.

Development

Fill a tray with cool water for the preliminary washing of the exposed cyanotype. Slip your paper into the tray face up and rock the tray to make sure no bubbles are trapped on the print’s surface. Lift the print with tongs or gloved hands and slide it back into the tray face down. Continue lifting and flipping the print, face up, face down, for at least 2 minutes. (Change the water in the tray every few prints to get rid of the chemicals that leach into the water as they release from the unexposed areas of the paper’s surface.)

Transfer the print to a larger wash tray equipped with a tray siphon running fast enough so that it injects fresh water into the tray and pulls out used water from lower down, but not so fast that it buffets and crimps the print. A thick, soft paper such as BFK Rives, which absorbs chemicals deep into its fiber, requires longer washing than a harder, thinner paper such as single-ply Strathmore 500. Determining how long to wash the print requires judgment regarding paper strength, archival qualities, and water conservation. Certainly any paper is not sufficiently washed if water draining off the print is yellow instead of clear but there is no need for excessive washing that can actually remove some of the image as well as waste precious water.

Bleaching a Cyanotype

It is common practice to deepen the blue of shadow areas with a brief bleaching of the cyanotype — and perhaps, in the process, to retrieve overexposed details and clear foggy highlights. In the past we have immersed the cyanotype in a solution of approximately one part household laundry bleach (5% sodium hypochlorite) to 32 parts water. Because bleach tends to make paper fibers short and brittle, the print must be washed afterwards until you can no longer smell the bleach on the paper.

In Finland, sodium hypochlorite is considered so harmful to the environment that a prescription is required to obtain it. My Finnish friends suggested a dash of hydrogen peroxide as a safer alternative since it reduces to water instead of forming harmful chlorine compounds, has no fumes, and is gentler to paper fibers. I found that peroxide had the advantage of deepening the blue of the most exposed parts of a cyanotype without bleaching away any highlight detail. I have since read and then seen for myself (to my embarrassment) that peroxide simply gives us a preview of how the cyanotype will look when thoroughly dry — which is a darker blue than when first developed and wet.

In my search for a kinder, gentler bleach, I have Judy Seigel, editor of Post-Factory Photography, (see “Resources”), to thank for letting me know about bleaching with odorless and more effective sodium carbonate, commonly known as soda ash and available in the laundry section of grocery stores as ‘washing soda’. I have not yet determined its effect on paper fiber but suspect that it is less destructive.

Prolonged immersion in either sodium carbonate or sodium hypochlorite takes a cyanotype back through color changes that the print went through during exposure, but in reverse order. You may stop the bleaching process at any shade of blue, green or yellow that you fancy by pulling the print from the bleach tray and plunging it into a tray of water. A continuous-tone image will often bleach into a split-tone with gray highlights and blue shadows or yellow highlights and green shadows. This occurs because the bleaching has more impact on the thin highlight passages than in the denser shadow areas.

Richer bleached colors result when you overexpose onto a soft paper such as BFK Rives which absorbs more of the cyanotype solution than a hard paper such as single-ply Strathmore 500.

Toning with Tannic Acid & Sodium Carbonate

During prolonged bleaching, the lighter tones disappear first and eventually the entire image will turn a pale yellow or gray or vanish. These lost tones can be restored in a rosy-brown color by putting the bleached cyanotype in a tray of water laced with lithographer’s tannic acid, a light brown powder (see Bostick & Sullivan in “Resources”) that smells like instant tea mix. In the past we used to bleach cyanotypes in household bleach (sodium hypochlorite) and then bring back the image in tannic acid.

If you are using sodium carbonate as your bleach the instructions seem counter-intuitive but it works to immerse the print briefly in tannic acid (about 1/2 teaspoon to a quart of water) and then in sodium carbonate (about 1/2 teaspoon to a quart of water) and then back into the tannic acid and on to a preliminary wash tray and a final wash tray.

Wear gloves when handling the jar of powdered tannic acid and when toning prints in a tray of tannic acid in water since it stains the skin. The darkening action of tannic acid continues during the washing and drying of the print. Through experience you’ll learn to remove your print from the tannic acid bath before reaching the desired effect.

If you are using a continuous tone negative, a duotone image with rosy brown highlights and blue shadows can be gotten with partial bleaching and toning.

Discard the tray of tannic acid at the end of the toning session. It does not keep well. You can discard the tray of sodium carbonate too.

According to the artist Enid Mark, the tannin in strong cheap tea will give a warmer tone than tannic acid. She has applied bleach selectively (she used household bleach but you might try sodium carbonate) and toning with tea to achieve ‘local’ color within a print. A dry cyanotype on a flat surface can be brushed selectively with bleach and then flooded with water so that the bleach is washed out but the surrounding areas are not affected noticeably. Applying bleach to a damp or even a wet cyanotype will give softer edges as the bleach bleeds into surrounding areas. A slow transition, or gradient, from deep blue all the way to yellow can be achieved by immersing the part of the print to be lightened in a bleach bath and moving it skillfully to avoid ‘lap’ marks. Having the print damp to encourage capillary action helps to soften the effect here too. The same strategies apply to the application of either tannic acid or strong tea in areas that have been bleached to restore the original cyanotype image but in brownish tones. You should be warned that tannic acid slightly stains the white parts of a cyanotype image. Strong tea is even more likely to discolor highlights; after all, it has been used for a long time to tint white lace and crocheted doilies.

Deconstructing Cyanotype

I highly recommend Cyanotype: The History, Science and Art of Photographic Printing in Prussian Blue by Dr. Mike Ware’s (see “Resources”). After reading it, I began to experiment with the components of cyanotype, attempting an artist’s deconstruction of the medium.
The most interesting result came from coating paper with Part A, the light-sensitive ferric ammonium citrate, alone. Exposing the coated paper to actinic light through the negative produced a tan rendition of the image, which washed off the paper entirely in water. But if, instead of developing in water after exposure, Part B, potassium ferricyanide, is selectively brushed on the Part A rendition, the image instantly turns blue wherever the brush touches the image area. As you slip the paper into the tray of water, a fine veil of blue may appear where potassium ferricyanide drifts across parts of the image that you didn’t brush it onto. This delicate effect can be controlled by the flow of the water. A few students experimented with this way of working. There was some notable success mixed with a little disappointment that the blue wasn’t quite as vibrant as it is when Parts A & B are mixed, applied, and exposed together.

Read the next section of the book.

Writer / Malin Fabbri

Download a free Cyanotype workshop compendium. For Cyanotype workshop for beginners using pre coated paper.

This summer I held workshops in cyanotypes. It was a good deal of fun. No blood, but definitely sweat – during a rainy period and the UV light blowing the fuse – and a couple of tears from frustrated children with too high ambition for their masterpieces. But, mostly fun.

To make a long story short. Before the workshop I had a last minute “Oh darn, I should really have a compendium too!” situation. I made one and it’s now sitting here waiting to be used again. So, to save you all from last minute workshop panics, here it is. For free of course. Welcome to use it.

The compendium is for workshops for beginners using pre coated papers.

• Download the English version
• Download the Swedish version

Good luck with your workshop!

Writer and photography / “kdstevens” on Lomography

Cyanotypes are fun and easy and are the perfect way to begin your exploration of alternative and historical photographic processes.

You need four things to make a cyanotype:

1. Sensitizing solution; either in a kit or mixed yourself.
2. A medium; usually smooth, 100% rag paper but you can also use cloth, wood, or your neighbor’s dog.
3. A suitable negative. Suitable means big—35mm or 120 just won’t cut it. The negative should have a full range of densities—flat negatives also won’t cut it.
4. A contact print frame. (A piece of glass a little larger than your negative will do or you can make one using a photo frame, some foam core board, and some spring clamps.)
5. Oops! There’s a fifth one: a UV light source. The sun will do nicely for this.

Let’s take them step by step.

If you buy the kit (hint: buy the kit first time around) then just add distilled water to the 2 bottles in the kit and shake until the contents are dissolved. If you do it yourself; get a scale, mixing rod, beakers, storage bottles, and chemicals together. Then measure and add 20 grams of ferric ammonium citrate to 100 ml of distilled water and mix until dissolved and decant into a brown glass bottle. This is solution A. Next add 8 grams of potassium ferricyanide to 100 ml of distilled water and mix and decant that into a brown glass bottle. This is solution B. You can store them separately in a cool dark place for several months.




Mix equal parts of A and B together and coat the paper or other medium under dim incandescent lighting using a foam brush (or any brush without a metal ferrule—I know, I know, the photos show me using a brush with a metal ferrule, but don’t make the mistake I did). Brush the solution evenly over the medium using up and down and back and forth brush strokes. Set the coated paper aside in a dark location to dry completely. Some people recommend coating the paper a second time. I’ve done it both ways and have gotten good results from each.






We are making contact prints here so the print comes out the same size as the negative you’re using so, unless you have a large format camera, you will need to make a digital negative. Whole books have been written on the subject but you don’t need to make a big deal out of it. Just get some Pictorico Premium Overhead Transparency Film (OHP). Then, open your image in whatever post production software you use and, if it’s not already in black and white, then convert it using your favorite method. (There are many ways to do this in Photoshop; some better than others—but that’s a subject for a whole other tipster.) Once you have a black and white image and have adjusted the levels, brightness and contrast to your liking, invert (or reverse) the image. Using an inkjet printer, print the reversed image onto the OHP film at whatever size you want the final image to be and you are done. (After you gain more experience exposing and developing cyanotypes you’ll likely wish to adjust the tonal values a bit and reprint the negative.)

A cheap contact print frame can be made using a picture frame with glass, some foam core board or plywood cut to fit inside the frame and some clamps to clamp it all together. You can also just use a piece of glass or Plexiglas. Whatever you use, you want to end up with the negative, emulsion side down, on top of your dry, sensitized paper and both pressed underneath the sheet of glass. So that’s negative and paper, emulsion side to emulsion side, underneath the glass (this can be done under normal room lighting).





Expose the negative and sensitized paper in direct sunlight. The exposure will vary depending of the paper used, the density of the negative, and the amount of sunlight amongst other variables. Where I live (in California) during the summer months, exposures run from 3 minutes up to 6 minutes. Winter months or northern latitudes can take up to 30 minutes. That’s why, especially early on, you need to be able inspect your print as it’s being exposed. You’ll notice in the accompanying photographs that my contact print frames have hinged backs. That’s so that I can open up one side and lift the paper to check the exposure without losing registration between the negative and the paper. You can also tape one edge of the negative to the paper using clear tape if you’re not using a contact print frame. Obviously, check the exposure out of direct sunlight. The exposed image should be a little darker than what you want the final image to be. The darkest shadow areas may even start to reverse and become lighter, almost like a solarized photograph.

Development couldn’t be easier: just wash the print for about 10 minutes under slowly running tap water. The image will lighten and the blue stain will wash off of the highlights and may even seem too light. Set the print out to dry on a nylon window screen or hanging from a clothes line. As it dries, the highlights should darken a little a pick up more detail and the shadows lighten and pick up more details there also.

That’s it—you’re done! Pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself in the knowledge that you’ve just made a print the same way it was done back in 1842.

This article is originally from the Lomography tipster series.

Writer and photography / Egill Ibsen

Egill Ibsen shows us how cyanotypes can be painted with acrylics to get a spectacular result.

After drying the print thoroughly I prepare the acyrilc paint. Some aerias are
painted thickly f.ex. the “tree”.

Other areas are painted with many layers of thin washes.

I like to paint these thin washes quite quickly and then I even them out with a mop brush. After every application the print needs to dry otherwise one risks muddying the painting.

Sometimes many layers are needed to get the desired effect.

The rest of the print is painted with different types of brushes and washes.

I use hog hair brushes to ruffle up the paper for added texture and effects.

To touch up the cyanotype layer or to deepen the shadows I find the Payne´s
Gray color to do the best job.

The finished print (size 43x31cm).

Egill Iblsen is a part time artist living in Iceland using both classic and alternative photography as an artform.

Writer and photography / Brian Young

Brian Young tells the fascinating story of salt prints and cyanotypes – photographic printing processes from the 19th Century.

“Iron Bridge, Chiang Mai” by Brian Young. Salt print and cyanotype compared.

With numerous websites, workshops and exhibitions inviting us to enjoy alternative prints and learn how to make them, non-digital photographic processes, such as salt prints, cyanotypes, van Dyke, albumen and platinum/palladium prints are claiming an increasing number of followers. A combination of science, intuition and lucky accidents, many of these processes have been around for over 170 years and the stories behind them read like an adventure.

Why am I interested in printing without an inkjet? Because it is satisfying to do everything from beginning to end, choose and prepare your own paper and produce final prints of richly toned monochromes. I like their timeless and dreamy look and the way different techniques, the personal touch and different papers create an infinity of unique works.

Are they outdated? I don’t think so and it’s interesting to see how they attract digitally fatigued young people, who invariably ask, ‘Please make me a print’.

There have been numerous arguments about “nostalgic and sentimental” alternative prints, whether they compete with digital and automatically position themselves as more “artistic”. Mike Ware’s essay, In Defence of Alternative Processes (www.mikeware.co.uk) overviews this debate. They are simply there as another expression of an image. Labour intensive and linked to a laboratory setting, old prints are unlikely become mainstream. I simply aim to make people mindful of their existence and their captivating history.

Since the early years of the 19th Century the development of the camera has proceeded alongside the understanding of how certain materials react to light and how they can be used to capture and retain an image.

As the title suggests, this article is concerned with the second partner in this joint venture: the photochemistry of early processes and how they matured up to the beginning of the 20th Century. Apart from interesting you in the history, I hope that you may be inspired to try some of these methods yourself.

The good news is that you don’t need to have studied chemistry to understand how these processes work or even how to carry them out. You will find plenty of help with the practical aspects of old print-making given at the end of the article.

The foundations of mainstream photographic printing were established in the 1790s by Thomas Wedgwood, the son of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter.

“Victor” by Brian Young. Top to bottom: original digital image, digital negative, salt print, cyanotype, toned cyanotype.

Thomas was a sickly and sensitive young man. He devoted most of his short life to studies in education and experimentation with light-sensitive materials. It was this latter work which has led some writers to refer to him as the ‘first photographer’.

In a paper published in 1802, Wedgwood (together with Humphrey Davy) described photograms made on white leather impregnated with silver nitrate. Unfortunately, he did not know how to make these images permanent. Nevertheless, this is the first record we have of silver salts being used in the production of photographic images.

Some thirty years later, in 1833, a certain William Henry Fox Talbot of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, went to Lake Como with his new wife Constance. In those days, travellers were expected to return home with pictures of their trip in the form of pretty watercolours and pencil sketches. Fortunately for photography, here was gentleman of private means who could not draw.

This was something of an embarrassment, as men of Talbot’s class were expected to be to be accomplished in the gentle arts. Poor Henry was so hopeless that even with a camera lucida (an optical device which superimposed a scene on the drawing paper) he couldn’t get a decent image.

When he returned from his honeymoon, Talbot began to try out a few ideas that had occurred to him whilst in Italy. He found that a sheet of paper soaked in a weak solution of table salt (sodium chloride) and subsequently coated in silver nitrate, darkened when exposed to sunlight. He also found that after exposure, the application of a solution of sodium chloride or potassium iodide inhibited further darkening. These were two very important discoveries.

First, he had hit on the idea of impregnating a sheet of paper with silver chloride alone. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound particularly inspired but this was such a decisive moment for photography that I can’t resist telling you about it – please stay with me!

If you mix a sodium chloride solution with a silver nitrate solution in a glass it will immediately turn white – the water into milk trick. A chemical switch has taken place, the sodium chloride (table salt) has become insoluble white silver chloride and the silver nitrate has changed to colourless, water-soluble sodium nitrate.

If you try to soak a sheet of paper with a suspension of silver chloride in water, it won’t work. As soon as the paper dries, the silver chloride falls off. That’s why Talbot’s conjuring trick was so clever – he made the chemical switch take place inside the paper.

The other discovery, finding a way to slow down the fading of the image, was the first step towards the concept of fixing – more about this later.

Talbot used his treated papers to make photograms of leaves, grasses and flowers which he could then trace. He called this “the art of photogenic drawing”.

“Curved Steps, Wasserturm, Berlin” by Brian Young. Cyanotype.

During the following summer of 1835, Talbot took advantage of the glorious weather and went a step further. He had his carpenter make several small boxes fitted with a single lens. At the focal plane, he placed a piece of his sensitised paper. The boxes (or ‘mousetraps’ as Constance called them) were arranged at appropriate spots in the grounds of Lacock Abbey.

Even with the brilliant light of that legendary summer, the exposures were long but eventually Talbot had a set of the first paper negatives ever made; they were crude and unfixed but it was a beginning.

By the end of 1835, Henry Talbot had become involved with other activities and had set aside his photographic studies. It must have been quite a shock when, in January 1839, he heard the news that Daguerre had ‘invented’ photography. Not realizing that the two processes were quite different, Talbot reacted quickly and immediately claimed his prior discovery. He followed this up with the presentation of a paper at the Royal Society describing his photogenic drawings. At this point in the story, the most brilliant mind of his generation, Sir John Herschel, enters the picture. Herschel was a polymath, not only graduating from Cambridge in 1813 as a Senior Wrangler (the top mathematics undergraduate) but doing ground-breaking work in photochemistry as early as 1819 – which he couldn’t be bothered to publish.

Herschel and Talbot were good friends. Shortly after the Daguerre announcement Talbot visited Herschel at his home in Slough. Herschel’s wife wrote at the time:

“I happen to remember well the visit to Slough of Mr Fox Talbot, who came to show Herschel his beautiful little pictures of Ferns and Laces taken by his new process. – when something was said about the difficulty of fixing the pictures, Herschel said “Let me have this one for a few minutes” and after a short time he returned and gave the picture to Mr Fox Talbot saying “I think you’ll find that fixed” – this was the beginning of hyposulphite of soda fixing.”

Because of his earlier studies, Herschel probably knew more about photography than anyone but he didn’t think that his work was sufficiently important to publish. He was the first to use the word ’photography’ and the terms ‘negative’ and ‘positive’. One cannot help but wonder if the progress of photography would have been better served if Herschel had not, unlike Talbot, been such a highly accomplished artist.

When Henry Talbot returned from Slough, he began to look for ways to improve on his paper negatives of 1835. One of the drawbacks of these negatives from a commercial point of view were the very long exposures needed, even in bright sunlight.

Some great discoveries come about purely by accident, at least that’s how the story goes. One day, in the autumn of 1840, Talbot was working in his laboratory re-sensitising old sheets of treated paper that had been exposed but, for some reason, were blank. Whilst coating a sheet with silver nitrate solution he inadvertently flooded the paper with a solution of gallic acid.

To his great surprise an image appeared, an image resulting from what must have been a few seconds of exposure which had been hidden in the paper until revealed by happy accident. The notion of the chemical development of a latent image had been discovered.

Henry realised that here was the answer he had been looking for. A paper negative that could be exposed for a relatively short time, developed to reveal the image and subsequently used to print a positive image on another sheet of his treated paper. The salt print had arrived.

Talbot called his invention a calotype and, after tweaking it a little by coating the negative with wax to make it translucent, patented the idea in 1841.

Meanwhile, Sir John Herschel was busily inventing the cyanotype. Unlike Talbot’s process which used silver salts, the cyanotype made use of the photosensitive properties of two iron salts, ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.

By 1842, Herschel had perfected the cyanotype process and has historically been given full credit for its discovery. However, recognition must also be granted to Alfred Smee, the young doctor and electro-chemist who supplied Herschel with pure potassium ferricyanide (a safe, very distant relative of the potassium cyanide beloved of crime writers) and the suggestion that Herschel should experiment with ferric ammonium citrate, a substance then used medically as an iron tonic.

The cyanotype is probably best known as a means of reproducing architectural and engineering drawings in the form of blueprints. The process was also applied by Anna Atkins, a botanist who published photograms in her 1843 book “Photographs of British Algae – Cyanotype Impressions”. Perhaps the most curious application of the cyanotype was its use in printing postage stamps and currency during the Boer War.

“St Paul’s from the South Bank” by Brian Young. Salt print.

Given a good quality negative, the cyanotype and the salt print methods can be used to make wonderfully rich contact prints in blues, blacks and sepias. The section at the end of the article will tell you all you need to know to do this.

By the 1850s, photography had become the new craze and went commercial. Everybody wanted to have their picture taken and the process used was the albumen print.

The disadvantage of the salt print was its dull appearance. Although the internal chemistry of the albumen print was identical to that of the salt print, the addition of albumen (egg white) to the paper surface was a distinct improvement.

It produced an attractive glossy finish which brought out the detail of the image and enhanced the colour. If a matt finish was preferred then a little arrowroot could be added to the mix. The coating tended to crack over time and this was prevented by the addition of honey.

The production of salted albumen coated papers for subsequent sensitising with silver nitrate was big business during the second half of the 19th Century. It is said that, at one time, the Dresden Albumizing Company was using over 25 million eggs a year. Recipes requiring egg yolks abounded.

When you have mastered the art of the salt print, you might wish to try albumen printing. It is a long and pains-taking process but everything extra you need is available in the kitchen. Alternatively, you could just take the easy route and liven up your salt prints and cyanotypes with a coat of thinned artist’s varnish.

“Shadows, Asilah” by Brian Young. A cyanotype and its negative.

Although the first reference to a photographic enlarger was made by Draper in 1840, they were not commercially available until the turn of the century. In the absence of an enlarger, contact printing was used. If you wanted a big image then you needed a big negative and a big camera.

Large format cameras were the norm and plates up to 8in x 10in were common: plates as large as 20in x 24in (and the cameras to take them) were not unknown. Large plate cameras may have been inconvenient to handle but the image resolution was superb.

Towards the end of the century another of Sir John Henschel’s discoveries from 1842 gained recognition. This was the argentotype which used a combination of iron and silver salts. They became known as van Dyke prints because the colour was reminiscent of the work of the Flemish painter. It is relatively easy to make but mixing the sensitizer needs care. The final result is very similar to a salt or albumen print but more brown than sepia.

The platinum print (and its less expensive cousin, the palladium print) became popular when William Wallis introduced platinum paper in the mid-1870s. Difficult and expensive to make but with enduring and resonant tones, these are the king and queen of old processes. Platinum printing had a revival in the 1960s with photographers and printers such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Arentz and Irving Penn.

I hope that you have enjoyed this brief introduction to the history of printing. There is so much more to know and a very helpful book is Spirits of Salts by Randall Webb and Martin Reed, published by Argentum. The book is available from Silverprint Ltd (www.silverprint.co.uk/) as are all the chemicals which have been mentioned in this article.
If you are interested in learning about the more exotic methods and printing as art, I strongly recommend Christopher James’ The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes published by Delmar in the United States.

Just a word about safety: since you will be handling chemicals, please consult Ilford’s Health and Safety pages (www.ilford photo.com) before you get going.

Good luck with your printing, I trust that in realising these old processes you have as much enjoyment as I have over the past few years.

Cyanotype and salt print chemistry

Equipment

You will need a few items of equipment: 100 and 250ml plastic measuring cylinders; digital scales capable of weighing to 0.1g; a 60cm steel rule; several brown glass bottles in 250ml and 1litre sizes; a small plastic funnel; two or three 14x18ins plastic darkroom developing trays; flat brushes from an art materials shop, one for each process; several small pots or jam jars; a seconds timer; nitrile or latex protective gloves; safety goggles; and an apron or lab coat.

Making a negative

Salt prints and cyanotypes are contact printing processes, so the final image is the same size as the negative. In practice, image size is limited only by the size of transparency available and the capacity of your printer.
The more contrast in the original image, the better the final print. This is particularly true for salt prints. Contrast can be increased in Photoshop using Curves or one of the Artistic Filters. Posterizing also works well.
You will be starting with a digital image in RGB mode, and following a workflow created by Christopher James (“The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes”). The first task is to desaturate and adjust the contrast. When you are happy with this, go to Image-Adjustments-Invert to create a black and white negative. You could stop at this point but since you will be printing under UV light, an orange and black negative gives better contrast. Go to Layer-New Fill Layer-Solid Colour, ensure that Opacity is at 100%, and select Mode-Colour.

Press OK and in the Colour Picker Window, set CYMK to 0, 55, 55, 0 respectively, to produce a deep orange. Next, go to Image-Rotate Canvas-Flip Canvas Horizontal: this step will allow the ink side of the printed negative to be in contact with the paper. Finally, flatten the image and adjust the size. Print the negative on an A4 transparency.

The UV source

The sun is the ultimate UV supplier, but since we see so little of it in Northern Europe, an artificial source is essential. My recommendation is a 300W Osram Ultra-Vitalux lamp. Because of the intense heat generated by this bulb, it must be fitted in a ceramic holder. There are UV safety notes on the Osram website (www.osram.com/uv-ir).

“Sainsbury’s Fish Counter” by Brian Young. Printing frame with negative.

My lamp is surrounded by a fibre board box, with both top and bottom open. The assembly is attached to the wall of the workspace so that the UV light is concentrated in an area immediately below the lamp. Ensure that no light could be inadvertently directed into the eyes of the operator or of anyone else in the vicinity.

Build a shelf under the lamp to support the 30x42cm printing frame. Ideally, the height of the shelf should be adjustable to 20, 30 and 40cm below the bulb.

Choosing and preparing the paper

Paper for alternative printing must be strong enough to withstand repeated washings, so look for a weight in excess of about 250g/m². A good art store will have plenty of suitable papers in stock. In general, I use French-made Lana Acrylic, with a weight of 360g/m². The paper is a joy to use, and has a size of 50x65cm, which allows for two A3 (30x42cm) sheets: off-cuts can be used for exposure test strips. Rather than cutting the paper, tear it against a steel rule to obtain an artistic deckle-type edge. For toned cyanotypes you may prefer the more expensive 300g/m² Hahnemühle matt watercolour board since borders tend not to stain.

Paper for salt prints must be soaked in a 2% solution of common salt (20g salt in 1 litre of tap water) before being sensitised.

Some papers may have been sized during manufacture to make them less porous and some may not. It is safest to assume that your paper has not been sized and to do it yourself.

Salting and sizing may be combined in one operation (note that although paper for cyanotypes does not need to be salted, it does it no harm).

Here is how to salt and size: buy some transparent leaf gelatin from the supermarket. In a beaker, soak 2g of the gelatin in 100ml of cold water for about 15 minutes, then top up to 250ml with hot water from the tap. At this point, you can add 5g of salt if required. Stand on a warm radiator and stir occasionally until all the gelatin is dissolved. Allow to cool.

Treat the paper by brushing the salt and gelatin mixture onto the area to be occupied by your negative, and hang up to dry.

The printing frame

The printing frame is very simple to make. It consists of a 30x42cm fibre board back and a piece of picture glass of the same dimensions. The sensitised paper and negative are sandwiched between the backboard and glass. For aesthetic reasons, try and arrange the A4 negative symmetrically on the A3 paper.

Ensure that the negative is the right way around and that the inked side is in contact with the paper. If you have carried out the creation of the negative correctly, then these two conditions should be met automatically. Close the periphery of the sandwich with eight strong spring clips. To protect the glass from the clips, make a frame of thick card about 25mm wide to go around the edges.

The assembly is now ready to be exposed under the UV lamp.

Making a cyanotype

“Please take off your shoes, Coffee Shop, Pai” by Brian Young. Washing a cyanotype.

The two cyanotype solutions are made up as follows:

1. dissolve 20g of green (not brown) ferric ammonium citrate in 100ml of tap water. Store in a brown glass bottle.
2. dissolve 8g of potassium ferricyanide in 100ml of tap water. Store in another brown glass bottle.

On a sheet of prepared paper and using a soft pencil, mark where the corners of the negative will go. Take 15ml of each solution and mix them together in a small jar. In subdued light, brush the mixture onto the paper in the area outlined. Don’t flood the surface but be sure to cover every spot. It doesn’t matter if you go over the edge – brush strokes outside the image just add to the charm of a cyanotype. Finish by carefully laying off both horizontally and vertically.
Allow the paper to dry by itself in the dark for a few hours before using.

Mount the paper and negative in the printing frame (ink side of the negative in contact with the sensitised side of the paper) and place under the UV lamp. With the shelf set at 40cm below the lamp, exposure should be about 10-12 mins (less at shorter distances). However, with each new negative, it is wise to prepare and expose a few test strips before making the final print.

Put the exposed print in a large developing tray and wash it thoroughly for two or three minutes in the bath or shower with cold water from the hand spray.

The print will be a bright blue, which will darken slightly over the next few days. Lay flat to dry if you are intending to tone otherwise a stain may show up in the borders.

“The Open Door, Forbidden City, Beijing” by Brian Young. Toned cyanotype.

Toning a cyanotype

If you don’t care for bright blue, the colour of a cyanotype can be toned down to a rich black with strong coffee. Add 1 litre of boiling water to 20g of instant coffee. Cool it and bottle. Next prepare a weak solution of bleach by dissolving a pinch of sodium carbonate (washing soda) in 1 litre of water.

For the best results, let the print age for a few days, then start the toning process by giving it a 5 minute warm water bath in a developing tray. In another tray, prepare the bleach solution. Transfer the print to the bleach for no more than 30s and then put it back in the water bath and wash thoroughly.

Pour the coffee toner into a third tray and leave the print to soak face down for about 30 minutes. Wash well and dry flat.

For a sepia tone try strong green or black tea but use a slightly stronger bleach consisting of one quarter of a teaspoon of sodium carbonate in 1 litre of water.

“Lena & Olya in Palma” by Brian Young. Salt print.

Making a salt print

There is one salt print solution which is made up as follows:

1. dissolve 12g of silver nitrate in 50ml of distilled water;
2. dissolve 6g of citric acid in 50ml of distilled water.

Mix the two solutions together and store in a brown glass bottle. The citric acid acts solely as a preservative and has no role in the photochemistry.

From this point, everything that has been said about the cyanotype process applies to salt printing, with two exceptions. First, the exposure will be much shorter than that for a cyanotype – typically only 3 mins at 40cm. Secondly, after an initial five minute wash, the print must be fixed. This is done in a bath made by dissolving 25g of sodium thiosulphate powder and 2g of sodium carbonate in 500ml of cold tap water.

Leave the print in the fixing bath for about five minutes, agitating gently from time to time. Pour the fixer into a bottle for further use, and wash the print for another 30 minutes with water or use a ‘hypo’ clearing agent. Hang up to dry.

After the first wash, the print is brownish-purple, but on fixing it turns an unattractive light brown. Fortunately, in time, the colour mellows to a dignified greyish-sepia.

An edited version of this article first appeared as two parts in the Journal of the Royal Photographical Society (v153, nrs 6 & 8). We are grateful to the Society for the permission to use the articles.

Blueprint to cyanotypes – Exploring a historical alternative photographic process
by Malin Fabbri and Gary Fabbri
A well illustrated step-by-step guide to cyanotypes.
A lot more information on the process, chemicals, coating, exposure, printing, making negatives, washing and troubleshooting is available in this book.
Strongly recommended for beginners

Writer / Jim Read

Jim Read straightens out a few common myths on the cyanotype process.

I read so much rubbish about the process on the internet I thought I would put up this page to give my personal opinion about the myths.

To make cyanotype prints you ‘need’:

Expensive papers: Daler Rowney or Winsor and Newton cartridge paper will produce first class results. See Jim Read’s article on papers here.

An expensive UV light source: I use a face tanning machine I bought at a car boot sale 20 years ago for £1.

An expensive printing frame: I used an old picture frame until I made my own. Very easy to make with the minimum of tools.

A darkroom: I was astonished to find this I’ve demonstrated the process from start to finish in a north facing kitchen in the summer without blinds or curtains.

A print washing contraption: Prints are not ‘washed’ but cleared by placing them face down in a bath of acidified water. White vinegar from the grocery shop is ideal for this.

To make the negs with a home printer you ‘need’:

The most expensive Overhead Projection Film: Modern technology and computer controlled ‘lights out’ manufacturing methods have overtaken the made up a mountain in Japan variety.The so called ‘cheap’ stuff is now just as good.

An expensive printer: I use Canon’s 4 colour cheapest offering, I paid about £40. The above applies here as well.

Pigmented inks: I use the cheapest dye based inks £1 a cartridge, bought on eBay and I store the negs in folders.

As I’m sure you know already the process was discovered in 1842, the Herschel household would not have had electricity or running water. John knew that some salts of iron were sensitive only to UV light it was just a matter of finding the right combination so that his servants could have a simple and quick way of copying his notes.

I continue to use the process because I find it very dificult to consistantly achieve the very brightest but not paper white highlight with toning, given that the toner will stain the paper away from its base colour. It is this that keeps me using the process together with the occasional print that comes up really beautifully.

Jim Read is a UK based photographer who works in cyanotypes.

Writer and photography / Jim Read

Jim Read argues the case for using inexpensive papers for printing cyanotypes.

Like an idiot I succumbed to the photographers blackmail and bought some arches platine. I wish I hadn’t and to warn others before they part with their hard earned cash I’ve put up this page. The expensive, snobbish and ridiculous cap doffing aspect rides again (and I fell for it) I see it now as my duty to expose it (in both senses of the word for the rubbish that it is. I never offer my strong opinions without providing examples and at the bottom of the page you will find my Challenge.

Papers that can produce full tonal range prints and will tone without staining the surrounding paper base are available from every art shop.

Light blue platine mud

Platine print one, I coated this with 3 ml of emulsion and got this flat and muddy print. After this I resolved to put more emulsion on another sheet. This one was exposed for 9 minutes at 12 inches. You see can lighter areas where the emulsion has soaked into the paper.

Winsor and Newton cartridge paper

Under exposed at 8 minutes, using the the same coating technique as the Light blue platine mud but showing a greater tonal range. This was made with my first and not very contrasty negative, the 1 above and the 3 below this one were made with another more contrasty negative.

Dark blue platine mud

Exposed for the same 9 minutes. I coated some more platine with 5 ml of emulsion and still there are areas where it soaked so far into the paper that it resulted in areas that are far too light.

Winsor and Newton cartridge paper

I used the same coating technique again but exposed this for 11 minutes, once again the cartridge paper produces a better print even though it is overexposed.

Canson Montval

And yet again coated in the same manner and exposed for 9 minutes. I expected that the platine being the ‘pinnacle’ of alternative process papers would produce a print that was far in advance of this one. Which as you can see has a full tonal range and even some depth to it, the negative needs a lot more doing to it so the final print will be a lot better than this.

Daler Rowney cartridge paper (2 days later)

Usual coating technique. Printed from negative number three. 9 minutes exposure at 12″. This is approaching what I want maybe just a bit lighter to make it suitable for a brief bleach and tannin toning.

Daler Rowney Cartridge Paper

This is a finished print to show you just what can be achieved. It has been bleached in a pinch of washing soda and toned in tannin for a few minutes.

You can see now why I consider platine to be absolutely useless for the Cyanotype process. I know you are going to think that no one else has said this. Of course they haven’t because they will think it’s their fault and not the paper or even worse, this is what Cyanotypes will look like, such is is power of photographers blackmail. I find that there is so much misinformation on the www because someone initiates something and everyone else copies it thinking it to be gospel. I prefer to do things for myself and then backup my findings with examples.

Challenge

I have had some feedback all of it so far anecdotal. If someone can prove to me by example that by coating platine without any modification whatsoever and with the original formula (Brown AFC preferably, but Green if you cannot obtain it) as I have done to all the prints above and I am able to repeat the same, I will retract all I have said and be platines most ardent advocate. Of course it must be with a superb print far in advance of the above to warrant the expenditure.

Paper types that work

I have been asked by Silverprint Ltd of London to recommend papers that are suitable for printing using the Cyanotype process. I can only do this by example, I do not use many papers, toning will produce a good range of colours in all of them.

Winsor and Newton Cartridge paper

This print was overexposed, bleached back in washing soda and toned in Tannin to produce this reddish/yellow tone.

Daler Rowney Cartridge paper

This was bleached momentarily in a pinch of Washing Soda and then toned in Tannin for a few minutes.

Canson Montval Watercolour paper

The print has been bleached for 30 seconds and then toned in Tannin for 5 minutes.

Fabriano 5

Produces a deep blue print but tones to what I consider to be a nasty shade of pink.

For someone just starting the process I would advise the cheap cartridge papers, expensive papers inhibit experimentation and lots of it is needed to obtain good prints. I used the cartridge papers for proofs until it suddenly dawned on me that they produced prints just as good and sometimes far superior to the more expensive papers.

The process is a chemical joke that 2 simple ingredients should produce the only archival photo print method with empirical evidence is laughable. That the best prints can be produced on the cheapest papers must surely be a continuation of that, I like to think that John can read this and laugh alongside me.

Many times I have read the words, Cyanotype is only suitable for certain subjects, they of course never state which Which is of course complete rubbish by knowing a how a paper will print and tone, a mood to complement the image can be easily achieved.

Jim Read is a UK based photographer who works in cyanotypes.

Writer / Jill Enfield
Photography / Jill Enfield, Glenn Rand, Robert Cone, Elisabet Moreto, Graciela Olio, Kit Anderson, Paul Dale, Rebecca Barefoot, Kate Missett, Mary Fretz

Many alternative photographic processes can be used to print on ceramics and clay. In this excerpt from Jill Enfield’s Guide to Photographic Alternative Processes, Jill shows us how to print Pyrofoto, Laser Transfers, Gum bichromates, Cyanotypes, Silkscreen PhotoEZ and Phototransfer onto different surfaces.

Throughout history artists have been relying on others to help produce work. This is not anything new. I am a firm believer that the digital age helped in making this even more evident. The access to images through digital negatives has opened up new possibilities to all artists that are very exciting.

Ceramic and enamel on metal began in the 1750s with the appropriation of images from copperplate engraving. Then, in 1854, Leron de Marcarson, a Frenchman, filed a patent for a process of vitrified photography onto porcelain. Around 1860–70, when gelatin was being used in photography, photo-ceramics became popular. A layer of light-sensitive gelatin emulsion containing colored enamel glaze was coated onto ceramic pieces, exposed with a negative, washed in water for developing the image and fired. The primary use of this process was to put images on gravestones.

While I am not a ceramic artist, I discovered that many of the photographic processes can be used along with ceramics. I am in no way an expert, but this excerpt from Chapter 13 should get you started.

I have been working on and off with liquid emulsion on tiles for many years and I have always wanted to make them more permanent. I have read that some people have fired the emulsion and they have worked. I have never been able to find out how. I have made countless tests and the outcome is always the same – the silver burns off and I have been left with a plain tile. What a disappointment!

According to an article on printandclay.net, Liquid Light does not have a sufficient metallic content to leave an image if fired. I have tried to use AG Plus, which has more silver in it, and I have also added silver, but to no avail. Apparently, silver fires out in oxidation, which means it disappears. (If anybody reading this has done this successfully, please let me know how!) Almost any other metal can work, such as platinum, palladium or gold. This may be a little expensive for the average photographer to experiment with, but it is possible to do.

When I heard there was a class at a pottery studio in Greenwich Village on photography and ceramics, I had to take it. By the way, I am horrible at hand building! But I decided I was there to try things out, so I did the best I could. Luckily I had a great teacher (Kate Missett, whose work is in the book and this article) and a lot of fun people in my class. I laughed a lot. I suggest that if you have never done any firing before, take a class.

This image was originally shot with 2 1/4 B&W film, printed and handpainted with oils and pencils. I scanned in the print and then used LAZERTRAN to make a decal. The decal was then put on a tile and cooked in my oven. I now have a permanent image, in color on tile.

Not everything photographic can be fired, but you can still use ceramic pieces to get great results. For example, instant film transfers, liquid emulsion and Lazertran decals can be used and then protected by several coats of varnish. They cannot be used on a floor, but they can certainly be used for decorative purposes.

©GLENN RAND. GLENN IS A PHOTOGRAPHER AND A POTTER. THIS IS A CYANOTYPE (NOT FIRED) ON ONE OF HIS CLAY PIECES THAT HE DID NOT FIRE AFTER EXPOSING THE CYANOTYPE.

The most common method seems to be with silkscreening techniques. Cyanotype can be fired. Its color changes from blue to reddish-brown or yellow, but it is permanent. Gum bichromate can also be fired, but instead of mixing watercolor pigments in with the gum, you use what are called mason stains. The printing is pretty much the same as if you were working on paper, you just have to learn what color the mason stains change to after they are fired. And while inkjet transfers do not work, using a laser printer with Waterslide Decals works well. Rockloid has a product called Pyrofoto that I was hoping would be similar to liquid emulsion. It is a great product, but it is more for high-contrast line drawings or images, not continuous tone.

Terms you need to know for this subject

Cone: A cone is a temperature measure. Potters buy them from their ceramic suppliers and place them in the kiln to determine the temperature. Each cone is made to melt at a specific temperature and is extremely precise – for example, 06 for earthenware, 10 for stoneware or porcelain, 018 for luster.
Undervitrified: This means the clay has not been fired to the maximum melting point of the silica in the clay body, so it remains more breakable than it should be. It is the same as underfired. It is especially important to fire tiles to their correct maturity or melting point as they often sustain heavy use. For example, they are often cleaned with various chemicals (like in a kitchen) that could cause later problems in the glaze, such as cracking or pitting.
Mason stains: These are commercial combinations of colors.
Oxide: These are pigments from the ground – there are only seven that are natural.
Slip: This is liquid clay that seals the clay.
Underglazes: These come as slips, pencils and pastels, which you glaze over. Amaco is one company that makes underglazes that are semi-moist; they have color pen sets.

Duncan is another company. Ceramic stains change color as they fire, but underglazes are like water colors: the colors stay as they look before and after firing.

When firing photographic processes, note that silver burns out at about 500°F; for gum, bisque fire to Cone 2; if whites don’t clear, try Cone 6; cyanotype should be bisque to Cone 6.

Materials needed for these processes are as follows:

• apron
• Ceramic pieces – along with pieces for testing!
• sponges
• sponge brushes.
• glazes: premixed work well, such as Amaco or Majolica underglaze. The word glaze implies the chemical contains silica and will form glass. Glazes are specially made chemical concoctions that sometimes include mason stains as a source of color. If you use any of these sources of color, normally you put a clear glaze over them to seal them.
• high-contrast negatives or photogram materials
• nitrile gloves
• laser printer (fro Decals)
• positive image (for Decals)
• trays
• glazed pieces. (for Decals)
• ceramic mixing bowls
• negatives or photogram materials
• pencils
• drafting tape
• 3M #811 Magic tape
• plate glass
• UV box or sunlight
• hair dryer with a cool setting
• cups and bowls
• plastic spoons
• graduates
• storage bottles
• eye droppers
• running water

Pyrofoto

This is a product put out by the same people that do the Tintype Parlor Kit and Liquid Light, as well as other photographic chemicals and kits. Pyrofoto is a good option for getting high-contrast images onto bisque or high-fired ceramic pieces. Check out their website rockaloid.com for fun ideas and a list of products. Some camera stores carry their products, but if you cannot find them in your area, order from them online. Pyrofoto can be mixed with any liquid ceramic glaze and applied to a ceramic piece that has already been glaze fired. A transparency is then placed on top of it and exposed to UV light for 2–15 minutes. Using a sponge, you wipe away the unexposed areas and fire the piece again.
Pretty cool!

©ROBERT CONE. THIS PRODUCT WORKS GREAT WITH HIGH CONTRAST IMAGES OR TEXT. IT IS EASY TO USE AND GOES ON CERAMIC SURFACES THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN FIRED, WHICH MEANS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING IN CERAMIC TERMS TO GET A PERMANENT IMAGE.

The steps

Working in dim room light (40-watt bulb):

1. Mix an equal amount of Pyrofoto in with the color glaze (1:1). If you are using Amaco glaze, the Pyrofoto will dilute your color a bit. If you want a darker, more saturated color, try doing the process a couple of times, or add some mason stain to the glaze.
2. If the mixture is really thick, add a little water. Mix often.
3. Wash your ceramic piece with powdered laundry detergent or whiting and hot water. Rinse well and dry.
4. Brush a very thin coat of the mixture on your surface.
5. Dry with a cool hair dryer or fan.
6. Coat again, this time a little thicker.
7. Dry.
8. Coat again, using the same thickness as your second coat (three coats should be sufficient, but you can experiment).
9. Dry.
10. Place your negative or photogram material on top and either tape it down or put a piece of plate glass on top of it. You need a good contact, just like in all the other processes.
11. Expose to sunlight or in a UV box for 5–15 minutes. This depends on your negative, the color of the glaze, how many coats you brushed on and your light source. In other words, do a test!
12. After the exposure, put in a tray of cool tap water for a few minutes to soften the emulsion.
13. Use a damp sponge with cool water and wipe away the unexposed areas. The image will slowly start to appear.
14. This can take several minutes – don’t panic! Go slowly or you can damage your image.
15. Dry the piece with a cool hair dryer and repeat with other colors as wanted.
16. Fire when you are finished with the image and the glazes are completely dry.
17. Make sure you work with someone who knows how to fire. The type of glaze you used determines the firing temperature (fire to Cone 06–05).

Troubleshooting and tips

• If your image does not start to show, you overexposed.
• If your image washes off, then your exposure was too short.
• If your mixture was too thin and watery, your image will be faint no matter how long the exposure was. This might be something you want to work with, using faint images and darker ones as a shadow of each other.
• Use this product only on glazed ceramic or on glass; non-glazed surfaces like bisqueware will not develop evenly.

Laser transfer decals

There are many companies that make these decals. You need to be sure to get the proper decal for your printer, as well as making sure they’re the decals for ceramics and can be fired. The recommended decals at the time of this printing were from Beldecal, a company in Florida decalpaper.com/product-p/25c.htm

They work in the same way Lazertran works, but these can be fired, which renders them permanent. (Lazetran instructions are on their website as well as my book in Chapter 12.) I have also used Papilio Aqua Slide Decal paper, but I had a few issues with it. It is stiffer than the Beldecal and I kept breaking it. I put it to my advantage and started doing it on purpose. I had issues with air bubbles with all of them – you really have to be careful and make sure they are all out. Use a soft brush or a wet finger to work the bubbles over to the edge of the decal and out. The Papilio/Z Bake was applied to a dish that was bought in a store and already glazed. They have an outdoor life of about three years unless you put urethane on it, then it may last longer. These transfers are recommended for indoor viewing. Lazertran cannot be fired, but it can be put into the oven. Slowly bring the temperature up to 400°F.

©JILL ENFIELD. MY FIRST DECAL ON AN UNGLAZED TILE WITH LOTS (AND LOTS) OF AIR BUBBLES. MY SECOND DECAL WITH A GLAZE ON TOP.

The steps

1. Print your image onto the decal paper using a laser printer (not inkjet).
2. Always print at the highest quality.
3. Wait about 30 minutes to make sure the toner has dried.
4. Cut out your image the way you want it to be.
5. Place the decal face-up in a tray of water until the image starts to lift away from the backing.
6. Gently transfer the image face-up onto your ceramic surface.
7. Pat flat, being careful to work out (from the center outwards) any air bubbles from under the decal.
8. You can use more than one decal before you fire.
9. Re-fire the piece several cones lower than the melting temperature of the glaze.

Troubleshooting and tips

• If part of your image is out of focus then you probably had an air bubble.
• If the decal does not have a good contact with the piece, the image will be out of focus.
• If you have holes in your image then you had air bubbles between your image and the ceramic piece. They popped in firing and left holes.

©ELISABET MORETÓ. ELISABET WORKS ON BISQUED CLAY WITH GUM BICHROMATE. HER NEGATIVES ARE FROM A PHOTOCOPY MACHINE AND SHE EXPOSES IN THE SUN. LOW TECH PHOTO MEETS CERAMICS.

Gum bichromate printing

This is basically the same as printing on paper. I am using the recipe that Kate Missett gave me, but feel free to experiment with amounts, just like when you are printing on paper. I found working on ceramics much more rewarding than on paper.

Chemicals needed

25 g ammonium or potassium dichromate
100 ml distilled water
gum arabic: thin to the consistency of cream with distilled water
powdered oxide, mason stains or under-glaze

Mix the ammonium/potassium dichromate with the distilled water and store in a brown bottle or jar.

Steps

1. In subdued light, mix one tablespoon of gum arabic and half a tablespoon of powdered oxide, mason stain or under-glaze.
2. Add one tablespoon of dichromate and stir well.
3. Mark with a pencil where your image will go. The pencil will fire off and will not be seen.
4. With a sponge brush, apply an even coat of emulsion to the ceramic surface. Coat first vertically, dab your brush onto newspaper to clean off a little and then coat another layer horizontally.
5. Dry the emulsion with a cool hair dryer.
6. Tape your negative down with the 3M #811 tape – it will not show.
7. Place this under a piece of plate glass (if it is flat). Otherwise, make sure you have a good contact using tape.
8. Gum is built up with layers just like on paper. The first colors will be faint.
9. Expose the image for 7–15 minutes under UV lights. Slightly faster in bright summer sun.
10. After exposure, remove the negative and place the clay into a tray of warm water for about 10 minutes to soften the emulsion.
11. Start gently agitating the tray.
12. You can help the developing along with a brush, just like you do with paper. A fan brush works very well, or rinse the image with a sprayer.
13. Make sure the clay is totally dry before you add another layer of emulsion.
14. Repeat mixing and applying the emulsion with each color, making sure the emulsion is dry and you have a good contact each time.
15. When you are done with your image, make sure it is totally dry.
16. Apply a glaze and fire to the correct temperature (this depends on the glaze you are using).

A beautiful example in my class was made with the following colors in this order:

1. presidium yellow
2. orange “encapsulated”
3. saddle brown.

©GRACIELA OLIO. “PROJECT SOUTH, HOME SERIES”. GRACIELA USES KERAFLEX WITH GUM BICHROMATE. THE KERAFLEX ALLOWS HER TO MANUVER THE CLAY INTO THESE DELICATE SHAPES.

©GRACIELA OLIO. GRACIELA MIXES: GLUE, HONEY OR EGG, WITH POTASSIUM DICHROMATE AND EITHER UNDERGLAZES, OVERGLAZES OR OXIDES. THE EMULSION IS APPLIED TO GLAZED PIECES OR KERAFLEX DIRECTLY. IF SHE IS USING A BISQUED OR AN UNFIRED SURFACE, THEN SHE APPLIES 1:1 GLUE TO WATER TO SEAL THE SURFACE BEFORE PUTTING THE EMULSION ON. ONCE THE EMULSION IS EXPOSED AND DEVELOPED, SHE DRIES THE PIECE COMPLETELY AND FIRES THE INITIAL FIRING TO 10200 C – 10400 C WHICH BURNS OFF THE GLUE. THE IMAGE IS NOT COMPLETELY FIXED YET AND NOW NEEDS TO BE KILN FIRED ACCORDING TO THE GLAZE AND CLAY THAT YOU USED. NOW THAT THE WORK IS FULLY VITRIFIED, THE IMAGE IS PERMANENT.

Troubleshooting and tips

• If the emulsion feels gritty, you have too much pigment.
• If the emulsion is watery, you have too much dichromate.
• If the emulsion is too tacky, you have too much gum.
• If the emulsion is applied too thickly, the bottom won’t harden and the whole thing comes off.
• If the entire emulsion comes off, try thinning the gum mixture with water.
• If the emulsion bubbles off, you underexposed.
• If the image is out of focus, you did not have a good contact between your image and object.
• If your image does not clear, you overexposed.
• If you cannot see any color at all, you underexposed.
• If your emulsion has been put on the thick side, increase your exposure.

Dichromate egg mixture, as per Kit Anderson

Kit learned how to do this from Peter Charles Fredrick, who called it Fredrick Temperaprint. He uses egg – either whole, just yolk or whites – rather than gum arabic mixed in with the potassium dichromate and pigments. Pigments should be either oxides or underglazes.

©KIT ANDERSON. KIT USES GUM ARABIC BUT STATES THAT GLOY GUM CAN ALSO BE USED (BOTH ON VITRIFIED CERMAICS) AND THAT EGG WORKS WELL ON BISQUED CERAMICS.

CHEMICALS NEEDED:

Eggs: 100ml of liquid filtered egg
Distilled water: 100ml
Ammonium or potassium dichromate: 3 teaspoons

STEPS

1. It is best to use fresh eggs from free-range chickens as they will produce a stronger binder because of the rich, viscous yolks, but any eggs will work.
2. Filter the eggs through a tea strainer or cheesecloth to get rid of the stringy clots from the egg, or any other bits you don’t want, or you will have white blotches in your image area. Put the strained eggs aside.
3. Mix 100 ml of distilled water with two teaspoons of ammonium or potassium dichromate. Store it in a brown bottle. Once mixed, add another teaspoon and mix well again. At the point where no more crystals will dissolve, you have a “saturated state.” No matter how much you mix, the crystals will still be at the bottom. Put the top on and rinse the bottle to keep the outside clean.
4. In another container mix 100 ml of liquid filtered egg and 50 ml of saturated sensitizer solution. Only mix enough for each session as once you mix the egg in with the dichromate, it will only last a few hours. Make sure to mix this very well.

Kit suggested mixing up a smaller amount:
one egg to 25 ml of saturated solution.
If you want a strong color use 3:1 (color to liquid);
for medium color use 5:1;
for light color use 8:1.

©PAUL DALE. PICTURE OF KIT ANDERSON COATING HER CERAMIC PIECE AND PLACING HER NEGATIVE ONTOP OF HER TILE BEFORE EXPOSURE.

Experiment with amounts and combinations, but remember that very dark colors will stop light from getting through and may stop the mixture from becoming insoluble.

Cyanotype

Any clay can be used with cyanotype, so it is natural to use it with firing. The only thing to keep in mind is that a lighter clay will show the image better. Other than that, there is no difference between printing on paper or clay. No sizing is needed. You can use the same toners to change the color, or leave it blue. Some people use the 1:1 proportion like on paper and others have used 2:1. Try both and see which works best for your images and ceramic piece. Firing will change the color as well, and this is when it helps to work with someone who knows what they are doing with a kiln. You can fire a piece and then do another cyanotype to add blue back into the image. To make multi-color images, you can choose to just work with cyanotype or you can combine cyanotype and gum, just like on paper. In other words, you can use cyanotype, fire the piece, use gum colors, fire, the blue will change. Your last step can be cyanotype that you can tone or keep blue, or you can repeat so that one cyanotype is reddish-brown from firing, one is a plum color from toning and the last one is blue.

Exposures are just like on paper – anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. On clay, the image needs to be much darker. You will need to check the exposure by eye – the shadow areas (darkest areas of your image, clear on your negative) should be a silvery, very dark blue-gray color. You can do a test – make an exposure on paper and double it on clay. Wash the clay with running water until the water runs clear (first the blue that was not exposed will wash out, then you need the yellow in the white areas to wash out). I had no trouble washing my piece, but if you do, next time coat with a layer of gum before coating with cyanotype. The gum asks like a sizing and will help keep the cyanotype from sinking into the clay so that you can wash it out easier.

©JILL ENFIELD. UN-FIRED CYANOTYPE ON CLAY.

CHEMICALS

Each should be mixed and kept in a separate brown bottle:

Chemical A: is the light-sensitive chemical
ferric ammonium citrate (green crystals): 25 g
distilled water: 100 ml

Chemical B: adds the color:
potassium ferricyanide (orange crystals): 15 g
distilled water: 100 ml

Glenn Rand sent these suggestions about firing:

• Low-fire oxidation will change the iron particles to red or red-brown.
• If you fire to Cone 019, you can hand-color parts of the image with overglaze enamels.
• Oxidation firings at higher temperatures produce similar colors in the red/red-brown range, but the color will go even darker.
• Glazes over the image might cause the image to disappear. The proper cyanotype is very thin and if the glaze absorbs iron, the image will disappear because the cyanotype is not sufficiently saturated with iron to penetrate most matte glazes.
• The color achieved through reduction firing is a deep brown. This method is recommended for porcelain or white clays only.
• Salt-glazing leaves a faint gray on a strong white background.
• Raku firing leaves a gray image if you air-dry and do not smoke the piece.
• Cyanotype does not adhere well to glazes, so do not glaze over areas that you want to cyanotype.

©REBECCA BARFOOT. I ASKED REBECCA TO SEND ME A PIECE WHERE SHE USED CYANOTYPE. THIS IS WHAT SHE SENT AND TELLS ME THAT SHE USED “THROWN AND ALTERED PORCELAIN, MULTI-FIRED. LITHOGRAPHIC IMAGE TRANSFER, UNDERGLAZE, CHINA PAINT, FIRED CYANOTYPE EMULSION, COMMERCIAL DECALS AND GOLD LUSTER.”

Silkscreen – PhotoEZ

There are also many other processes that you can do on clay. I tried PhotoEZ, which is similar to silkscreening on clay. However, I found it not so easy, but included it here for people that may want to try it. This is really for working with line art – no continuous tone images. PhotoEZ is a light-sensitive emulsion that is applied to a fine mesh nylon screen in order to make screen stencils. Like the other processes discussed thus far, it is sensitive to UV light and when exposed the emulsion changes into a tough coating. When a black-and-white, high-contrast image is exposed on top, the emulsion under the black areas remains watersoluble and washes off, creating an open mesh for paint to pass through. If you take care of your screen, you can keep using it over and over again. Make a test image before using a larger piece! Before it’s developed, PhotoEZ is heat- and light-sensitive. Unused PhotoEZ should be stored in a cool place in the black envelope it comes in. Some people store it in a refrigerator for a longer shelf life.

STEPS

1. Working in a dimly lit room, cut PhotoEZ to the size you want.
2. It comes with a protective layer that needs to be separated. The green sheet is PhotoEZ. The emulsion side is the shiny side.
3. Lay it, shiny side up, on top of a black piece of felt or paper. The emulsion is the shiny side.
4. Place the POSITIVE

   ©KATE MISSETT. “URBAN WILDLIFE TEAPOT”. KATE TRANSFERRED AN IMAGE THAT SHE TOOK IN NYC WITH PHOTO EZ.

   transparency or photogram material on top. If you have lettering, make sure the lettering looks backwards. In other words, if you want the image to read correctly, you need to flip the image before printing so it looks backwards. This way, when you place the transparency down, it will look correct.
5. Smooth the two layers together.
6. Lay glass on top and clip together, or put it inside the contact print frame.
7. Expose. If you are dong this at noon, in the sun, it should take about 1–2 minutes. If you are doing this with a UV box, it should take about 6–12 minutes.
8. If you are using a contact print frame with a hinge back, you can check your exposure. Once the image looks yellow-green, it is ready.
9. Place the PhotoEZ in a tray of water for about ten minutes, making sure the image is completely immersed.
10. Gently dab the emulsion side with a natural sea sponge or a soft paint brush to clear the image area.
11. Lay your screen between soft rags and gently pat dry.
12. Re-expose the screen to a light source for a minimum of ten minutes.
13. Let it dry completely with the shiny side up. If the emulsion touches another surface when it is wet, it will stick to that surface. You can re-soak the screen until it releases from what it is sticking to, although it may scratch.
14. Once it dries, it is no longer light-sensitive and can be saved and used again.

Troubleshooting

• If the image is on the stencil, but is not washing out enough:
  It is probably overexposed. Reduce your exposure time or the image might not be dense enough; go back and tweak your positive to give it more contrast.
• If there is not an image and the stencil is blue:
  Make sure the artwork is placed between the light source and PhotoEZ; or you may have left PhotoEZ out of its protective bag for too long – work in subdued light.
• If the stencil is washing away:
  The light source is not intense enough or you did not expose for long enough.
• If the image is fuzzy:
  You did not have a good contact.
• If the film is lifting off the mesh:
  You’ve underexposed, leaving the film too soft; try a longer exposure. Or you’ve washed too vigorously – use gentler spray.
• If the center is not washing out and the edges are washing out completely:
  The PhotoEZ is too close to the light source and is creating a hot spot in the center, but the edges are not getting an exposure.
• If paint is bleeding under the stencil:
  The paint is not thick enough – try using thicker paint. Or the stencil is not making a good enough contact, or getting enough light. Try moving the light further away or use more bulbs and less time.
• If the paint is not going through:
  Dried paint is clogging up the mesh or the paint is too thick.

Photo transfer

You can use laser or Xerox images (but not inkjet). Smaller images are easier to start with as notebook size may give you some issues with tearing. You can cut images smaller and then tile them together. This will print midtones, but high-contrast images work best.

©KATE MISSETT. THIS IS A LASER TRANSFER ON A WOOD FIRED PORCELAIN JAR.

Materials needed

These materials are slightly different than the other processes.

• Linseed oil
• mason stains
• plastic container with a lid
• gum arabic
• two containers of about one quart of water: one with plain water and one with a splash of gum
• soft, leather-hard, greenware clay (not fired, but somewhat dry)
• plastic spoons
• brayer
• glass covering a table.

STEPS

Mix the stains the night before:
Mix two parts stain to three parts oil (using the plastic teaspoons will make about 50 images). Mix for 15–20 minutes – it needs to be mixed well! Leave overnight. The consistency is similar to acrylic paint – not too watery but not to thick. The ink will dry and it forms a crust – you cannot add more oil and make it workable again.

©MARY FRETZ. MARY WAS IN KATE’S CLASS WITH ME BUT HAS BEEN WORKING FOR AWHILE ON CLAY. THESE IMAGES OF MANHATTAN ARE ALL DECAL TRANSFERS.

When ready to work

1. Spread the gum on the glass.
2. Put the image in the middle of the gum, face-up.
3. Spread to coat the image with gum so that the ink will stick to the gum.
4. Wipe up the excess gum on the glass – too much gum makes a mess.
5. Stir the ink.
6. Spread the ink in a line on the glass. Use the brayer to spread the ink on the glass – one direction and then the other so the brayer has a lot of ink.
7. Ink the image in one direction so it does not roll up on the brayer.
8. Wash the image with water and gum by squeezing over the image with the sponge – do not brush on. Start blotting to wash the ink off the white areas.
9. Repeat inking two more times for a total of three times.

NOW: Ready to put on clay

1. Lift the paper up by the corner.
2. You only have one shot to place this down on the clay. Once you place the image down, work from the corners out.
3. Use clear water and a clean sponge to blot.
4. Leave in place for a minute.
5. Burnish the image when moist but not soaked. (You can use a plastic spoon).
6. Use circular light pressure motions and make sure you get every detail.
7. Lift the paper from the corner – you can check it and place it back down and reburnish if necessary.
8. You can layer with different colors – deep brown and terracotta look great!
9. Fire like earthenware – Cone 06.

Thank you very much Jill for sharing this chapter with us!

Jill Enfield is a New Yorker, working in the liquid emulsion, kallitype, pl/pd, writes books and teaches workshops.

Penumbra Foundation | The Center for Alternative Photography
36 East 30th Street NYC 10016
Saturday, September 6th | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

This workshop will introduce students to the proper safety measures when mixing, storing and using various chemicals.

Instructor Morgan Post will demonstrate how to mix chemistry for Cyanotypes, Vandykes, Albumen, Salt Printing, Wet Plate Collodion, Kallitypes and Platinum/Palladium and its many developers. This course will answer questions like: Can I mix this type of acid with this type of chemical? Is it safe to store this in a hot darkroom?
How does humidity affect the longevity of this dry chemical? Can I pour this down the drain?

Every student will be able to purchase a “kit” of their choice at a special discounted rate, and leave with a safety plan for their own darkroom!

Writer / Malin Fabbri
Photography / Elizabeth Graves, Anita Chernewski, Malin Fabbri

An excerpt from Blueprint to cyanotypes: Exploring a historical alternative photographic process. Making photograms in the cyanotype process.

“Eyescreen” by Elizabeth Graves ©
Eyescreen is part of a small series of cyanotype photograms displaying the potential abstraction inherent in everyday household objects. The photogram was made with elastic hair bands and floral marbles, in an arrangement inspired by antique amber glass patterns. The paper was coated with a 1 inch wide watercolor brush, with the emulsion spread in long strokes vertically, horizontally, and then vertically again to achieve an even coating on the textured paper. It was printed on Fabriano Aquarello with the classic cyanotype formula, with an exposure time of about 6 minutes.

There are several ways of preparing an image that you want to turn into a cyanotype. The basic rule is that whatever you place between your light source and your canvas will effect the resulting image.

The two most common methods of creating images are contact prints using negatives and photograms.

You make contact prints by placing enlarged negatives on your material, which creates a positive the same size as the negative.
You make photograms by placing objects directly on top of the material and capture their shadows as outlines.

You can also draw on transparencies or glass, make stencils, or place other semi-transparent materials in front of your canvas.

A simple rhyme

Understanding how the final image will come out may be tricky the first time. But this simple rhyme pretty much sums it up – great for using on children’s workshops!

“If it lets light through
it will turn blue.
If it blocks out light
it will stay white.”

Photograms: Using Objects

Photograms: Arches Aquarelle paper was coated using a Japanese hake brush to get that handmade quality. The paper dried overnight in a dark room. Ribbon (above) and a branch (below) were placed on top of the coated paper and exposed for 12 minutes using a UV light. It was rinsed and left to oxidise to its final deep blue color.

The first cyanotypes were actually called photograms or shadowgrams, and that’s a good explanation of what they were. Placing objects on the surface of the coated paper and exposing them creates an image in the same shape as the object – a shadow.

Many different decorative shapes can be used to create silhouettes on fabric and paper. Cyanotypes, and especially those done using objects, sometimes have a dreamy, floating feel to them. The varying shades of blue are like a sky on a clear sunny day.

Any object can be used to make a photogram, but it’s usually those objects that have an interesting shape, or are semi-transparent in some way that are most interesting. Grass, leaves, branches, flowers or other plants can be used to make interesting compositions. You can experiment with kitchen utensils, toys, feathers, rope, lace, glasses, tools or anything else with shape and form.

“Chances” by Anita Chernewski ©
Anita used negative film and then made her cyanotype image using the classic cyanotype process.
Anita has a series of photograms on 16×20 gelatin silver paper she made using her hands and three-dimensional shapes out of paper. Since the images are one of a kind she wanted to reproduce them. Anita used the classic cyanotype process to make this cyanotype image.
She used TRI-X negative film, size 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches, in an old box camera. She photographed her three 16×20 inch gelatin silver photograms. After the film was processed, she coated the Saunders 140 lb. Watercolor Paper with the classic cyanotype chemistry using a foam rubber brush. After the paper dried, Anita place the negatives on watercolor paper and developed the images using a sun lamp. Exposure time was 20 minutes.

Anna Atkins created the first book of cyanotypes in her pursuit to capture botanical images of algae that seemed too delicate to be hand drawn.

Malin Fabbri has written three books on alternative photographic processes. In 1999 she began AlternativePhotography.com, and continues to be it’s editor.

October 18 | 10am-6pm
Penumbra Foundation| Center for Alternative Photography
Registration Online

This workshop is an investigation into the expressive possibilities of the Cyanotype process and will cover and demonstrate the techniques and procedures used for making these aptly named blue-toned prints. Students will learn the cyanotype process from start to finish, starting with the mixing of its iron-based, light sensitive emulsion, coating the paper with the emulsion and finally, by placing a negative on the coated paper and exposing it to a UV light source. Different chemistry formulas, emulsions, coating methods and paper choices will be discussed.
Students should be prepared to bring in several of their own images in negative form. Medium and large format B&W negatives, paper and acetate negatives and digital negatives are all appropriate for this workshop.

October 19 | 10am-6pm
Penumbra Foundation|Center for Alternative Photography
Registration Online

This workshop will cover and demonstrate the techniques and procedures for making these aptly named Van Dyke brown prints. Different chemistry formulas, emulsions, coating methods and paper choices will be discussed. The ability of combining the Cyanotype Process with the Van Dyke Process will also be discussed.

Students should be prepared to bring in several of their own images in negative form. Medium and large format B&W negatives, paper and acetate negatives and digital negatives are all appropriate for this workshop. This workshop may be taken in tandem with the Cyanotype workshop, to create prints incorporating both processes with beautiful results.

Writer / Malin Fabbri
Photography / Anne Storm van Leeuwen, Wendy Currie and Malin Fabbri

An excerpt from Blueprint to cyanotypes: Exploring a historical alternative photographic process. 3 different coating methods and how to dry and store the coated paper.

The cyanotype process is very “slow” which means the chemicals take a long time to react to light, so you can use dim lighting when you are coating the material. Since drying the material takes considerably longer than coating it, drying should be done in the dark.

Cyanotypes can be printed on any natural paper, cloth or fabric. Cotton, linen or silk are all excellent canvases. The printing will not work on synthetics, like polyester, since the chemicals won’t stick to the fibres in the fabric. A blend of cotton and polyester can work, although the colors may be less vibrant.

Prepare a flat surface for coating with a brush or a rod

Tape some newspaper or manila paper to a flat non-absorbent surface – such as a piece of glass – and tape your paper or material on top of the newspaper.

Then lightly mark the area you want to coat using a pencil and a ruler. Most of the pencil marks will wash away in the final step when you rinse your print.

Tip!
If you’re coating a lot of papers of the same size, it may be quicker to cut a cardboard template to the right size, and use this as a “frame” when coating.

Three different coating methods

There are a few different ways to coat your material or paper. Whichever method you choose, remember to stir your chemicals to keep them well blended as you apply them.

The paint method

Using a brush, simply paint the chemicals onto the material. Choose a brush without a metal ferrule, since metal may react with your chemicals. A Japanese hake brush is excellent and will give you a nice even coat. A cheaper bristle household pastry brush, or a foam brush can also work well. Nylon brushes aren’t as effective.

With this method it is best to coat the material several times, in both directions, until it is completely covered. Cover an area slightly bigger than your negative. The solution is yellowish green before processing, so it is quite easily seen if you’ve missed a spot.

You can use the brush strokes around the edges of the print as an effect. Wash your brushes in cold water when you’re finished.

“What’s on?” by Wendy Currie ©
“What’s on?” is an advertising bollard at The University of Melbourne. As soon as Wendy saw it with all its colored posters, she thought it would make a great cyanotype. Wendy visualized it toned & hand colored. Wendy was delighted when it turned out the way she imagined. The image was taken with a SLR camera & the large negative was made from a 6×4 inch colored image using a photocopier onto transparency film (at the time Wendy didn’t have access to a darkroom or computer). The contrast was increased and the image reversed creating the negative.
Wendy used the traditional cyanotype sensitizer and brushed it on freely as she wanted the brush strokes to be part of the image. She then toned it with tannic acid and sodium carbonate, handcolored using soft pencils smudging the color so there were no hard lines. The work was printed on a cold pressed cream paper.

The coating rod method

A coating rod is a very economical way of coating your material since it doesn’t retain any chemicals after application. You will be able to do more prints with the same amount of solution.

Use a syringe or a small cup to pour the chemicals onto the rod. Alternatively, pour the solution in a line onto the top of the paper. Pull the rod back and forth a couple of times over the material until it is covered. This method is a little tricky to get the hang of, but once you do, it works very well.

The dip method

You can pour out the solution in a tray, and submerge the material. Keep your gloves on and move the paper or fabric around the tray until it’s fully saturated. If printing on fabric squeeze as much excess liquid out as possible before hanging it to dry. If printing on paper, drain away as much excess fluid as possible before hanging.

More chemicals will be used with the dip method, but you’re pretty much guaranteed an even coating. Just make sure you don’t get streaks when you hang it to dry.

Drying

Once you’ve finished coating the material, dry it in a completely dark area. It is now sensitive to light and will begin to “fog” or change color if it is exposed to light. You can dry the material by hanging it on a plastic clothesline, pegging it with plastic pegs, or on a flat surface. If you have problems finding a dark room, a chest of drawers or an airing cupboard may be the solution. To speed up the drying process a hair dryer or a hot air fan can be used on moderate heat.

If you hang very wet material, be aware that the chemicals may cause both streaks in the final print if the chemicals run, and stains on the floor below. Before leaving the material to dry, don’t forget to clean up! Wipe all surfaces and remove any spillage or splashes. Any chemicals left can cause a nasty stain.

When the chemicals are applied to white material it appears greenish yellow when dry.

The dried material can be stored for later use, but some oxidation may occur and the final print can be dark blue on lighter blue, rather than blue on white.

“Magnolia” by Anne Storm van Leeuwen ©
Anne took this photo during her last visit to her husband’s antebellum family home in Georgia. It is a magnolia from one of the trees on the property. Anne is not from the American South but has lived there for a while now, and she feels that the magnolia is an icon of this region.
The cyanotype was printed on 4×6 inch handmade paper, Abaca/flax blend using the classic cyanotype formula with 1 layer yellow gum bichromate. The original image was taken with a Nikon Coolpix 2500, a negative made in Photoshop and printed on generic overhead transparency material.

Skip the drying and wet process

If you don’t want to wait for the material to dry you can try wet processing. This is done by simply exposing the material to UV light with your negative or objects placed on top when still wet.

However, do not use a negative you only have one precious copy of. The sensitizer contains chemicals that can damage a negative when wet. If you are making photograms and placing objects on the material it may also stain them, depending on the material they’re made of. So, think twice before you put antique lace or other valuable objects in contact with wet cyanotype chemicals.

Storing coated material

Coated material will not stay fresh forever. It can however be stored for around six months without too much effect on the final print.

If the coated material has turned dark green when you pull it out of the bag, it is likely to have oxidised. Using aged material will result in light blue highlights instead of what should have been a clear white. The print will therefore have less contrast. There is not much to be done about this apart from starting all over again and coating a new batch. One thing you can try is to soak the print for an hour after the final rinse.

To prolong the storage time of coated material as much as possible, make sure it is completely bone dry when storing it. Keep it in a black, light proof bag (those used for photographic paper are great) and press any excess air out of the bag before sealing it. Keep the bag in cool and dry place.

Malin Fabbri has written three books on alternative photographic processes. In 1999 she began AlternativePhotography.com, and continues to be it’s editor.

Writer / Malin Fabbri

Download a free Cyanotype workshop compendium. For Cyanotype workshop for beginners using pre coated paper.

This summer I held workshops in cyanotypes. It was a good deal of fun. No blood, but definitely sweat – during a rainy period and the UV light blowing the fuse – and a couple of tears from frustrated children with too high ambition for their masterpieces. But, mostly fun.

To make a long story short. Before the workshop I had a last minute “Oh darn, I should really have a compendium too!” situation. I made one and it’s now sitting here waiting to be used again. So, to save you all from last minute workshop panics, here it is. For free of course. Welcome to use it.

The compendium is for workshops for beginners using pre coated papers.

• Download the English version
• Download the Swedish version

Good luck with your workshop!

Writer and photography / “kdstevens” on Lomography

Cyanotypes are fun and easy and are the perfect way to begin your exploration of alternative and historical photographic processes.

You need four things to make a cyanotype:

1. Sensitizing solution; either in a kit or mixed yourself.
2. A medium; usually smooth, 100% rag paper but you can also use cloth, wood, or your neighbor’s dog.
3. A suitable negative. Suitable means big—35mm or 120 just won’t cut it. The negative should have a full range of densities—flat negatives also won’t cut it.
4. A contact print frame. (A piece of glass a little larger than your negative will do or you can make one using a photo frame, some foam core board, and some spring clamps.)
5. Oops! There’s a fifth one: a UV light source. The sun will do nicely for this.

Let’s take them step by step.

If you buy the kit (hint: buy the kit first time around) then just add distilled water to the 2 bottles in the kit and shake until the contents are dissolved. If you do it yourself; get a scale, mixing rod, beakers, storage bottles, and chemicals together. Then measure and add 20 grams of ferric ammonium citrate to 100 ml of distilled water and mix until dissolved and decant into a brown glass bottle. This is solution A. Next add 8 grams of potassium ferricyanide to 100 ml of distilled water and mix and decant that into a brown glass bottle. This is solution B. You can store them separately in a cool dark place for several months.




Mix equal parts of A and B together and coat the paper or other medium under dim incandescent lighting using a foam brush (or any brush without a metal ferrule—I know, I know, the photos show me using a brush with a metal ferrule, but don’t make the mistake I did). Brush the solution evenly over the medium using up and down and back and forth brush strokes. Set the coated paper aside in a dark location to dry completely. Some people recommend coating the paper a second time. I’ve done it both ways and have gotten good results from each.






We are making contact prints here so the print comes out the same size as the negative you’re using so, unless you have a large format camera, you will need to make a digital negative. Whole books have been written on the subject but you don’t need to make a big deal out of it. Just get some Pictorico Premium Overhead Transparency Film (OHP). Then, open your image in whatever post production software you use and, if it’s not already in black and white, then convert it using your favorite method. (There are many ways to do this in Photoshop; some better than others—but that’s a subject for a whole other tipster.) Once you have a black and white image and have adjusted the levels, brightness and contrast to your liking, invert (or reverse) the image. Using an inkjet printer, print the reversed image onto the OHP film at whatever size you want the final image to be and you are done. (After you gain more experience exposing and developing cyanotypes you’ll likely wish to adjust the tonal values a bit and reprint the negative.)

A cheap contact print frame can be made using a picture frame with glass, some foam core board or plywood cut to fit inside the frame and some clamps to clamp it all together. You can also just use a piece of glass or Plexiglas. Whatever you use, you want to end up with the negative, emulsion side down, on top of your dry, sensitized paper and both pressed underneath the sheet of glass. So that’s negative and paper, emulsion side to emulsion side, underneath the glass (this can be done under normal room lighting).





Expose the negative and sensitized paper in direct sunlight. The exposure will vary depending of the paper used, the density of the negative, and the amount of sunlight amongst other variables. Where I live (in California) during the summer months, exposures run from 3 minutes up to 6 minutes. Winter months or northern latitudes can take up to 30 minutes. That’s why, especially early on, you need to be able inspect your print as it’s being exposed. You’ll notice in the accompanying photographs that my contact print frames have hinged backs. That’s so that I can open up one side and lift the paper to check the exposure without losing registration between the negative and the paper. You can also tape one edge of the negative to the paper using clear tape if you’re not using a contact print frame. Obviously, check the exposure out of direct sunlight. The exposed image should be a little darker than what you want the final image to be. The darkest shadow areas may even start to reverse and become lighter, almost like a solarized photograph.

Development couldn’t be easier: just wash the print for about 10 minutes under slowly running tap water. The image will lighten and the blue stain will wash off of the highlights and may even seem too light. Set the print out to dry on a nylon window screen or hanging from a clothes line. As it dries, the highlights should darken a little a pick up more detail and the shadows lighten and pick up more details there also.

That’s it—you’re done! Pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself in the knowledge that you’ve just made a print the same way it was done back in 1842.

This article is originally from the Lomography tipster series.