Cyano Print Making

In this workshop, you'll produce several finished prints to take home and enjoy !  I'll prepare papers in advance as they need to cure over night, but will demonstrate the mixing of the chemicals, and application to paper. We will then choose botanicals to use in our compositions, take them outside for exposure. We will then bring them in and rinse them, then hang them to dry and watch the magic transpire before our eyes.  As they dry, the blue color becomes more prominent. You'll be amazed at the results and want to produce these whenever possible. It's easier than you think to make the magic happen.

Cyanotype Prints are a beautiful, magical and inexpensive way to make monochromatic photographic images using 5 ingredients; Potassium Ferricyanide, Ferric Amonium Cytrate, paper, sunlight and water.  This process was discovered in 1842 by Sir John Herschel and hasn't really changed at all.  The process works on the same basis as a photogram or contact print, where a UV light sensitive emulsion is prepared and then applied to a porous substrate like paper. Once the substrate has dried, objects or a negative may be directly applied and then exposed to UV light (the sun.) After the desired exposure time is up, the paper is then stopped and fixed simply by rinsing and resting in water. Due to the nature of the chemicals used to make the emulsion the final result is Prussian blue or Cyan, hence the name.

This can be done using old school photo negatives as well, but in this workshop, we will focus on botanicals.