California Palm - early attempt at Cyanotype

Nice to see you experimenting Dan.

The mottled look gives it some texture and character that might be missing otherwise. On the other hand, a nice clean image might be quite striking. Cyanotype is pretty fun, but it does require the right paper for best results. Arches hot pressed paper seems to work very well for medium weight fine textured prints, crane's kid is a good lightweight fine textured paper, and cot 320 (? I think that's the name) is a really nice heavy weight paper with a bit more texture. I've also used some kind of japanese hand-made paper which is pretty nice (don't remember the name, got it in a sample pack from Bostick-Sullivan).

Anyway nice shot. 8x10 neg?

Interesting. I was vaguely surprised to see any film mentioned in the creation of this as it looks more like a photogram. It looks like you might have a little bit of paperfogging going on from some reaction in the paper. I like Fabriano Watercolour Studio paper at the moment for a "budget" watercolour paper that works well untreated.

Don't worry about the mottled look, it's good as it is. Nice powerful dark blue color and a suitable subject for some experimentation with cyanotype.

Thanks all for the comments.

Matt - I've been talking to Gustavo to much and he has me thinking about all different sorts of things and processes. Who knows where this will take me and where I will find the time to try it all.

Walter - I have several different paper types that I work with Pt/Pd with and am starting to try out with Cyanotype. Bergger 320 is strange with Cyanotype because so much if it washes out unless I give it very long exposure times. It also is expensive stuff to experiment with. I'm working with Weston and Cranes Kid finish right now while I'm trying out Cyanotype, but haven't yet tried Arches.

Akki - This image may be a little overexposed for Cyanotype as some of the subtle detail is lost with the heavy blue in the image. It does look kind of like a photogram on the computer screen. There is more detail in the actual image. I think you may be right about the partial fogging. Before I exposed the paper, I noticed that there was a little "greening" on the surface, but not everywhere. Then when the exposure was done, the blue of the sensitizer was very inconsistantly colored before washing out and carried through as well after washing was complete. I do intend to try more with this paper just to see what it can do. Since I'm doing more Pt/Pd right now than Cyanotype, I mainly purchase the paper I use for Pt/Pd work, and try it out with Cyanotype. I know that Fabriano Artistico is good with Pt/Pd, but am not sure about Fabriano Watercolor Studio. Any chance you know about that? I would also like to have a whiter paper for cyanotype than the Weston that I'm now using.

Marco - This was clearly an experiment, but I kind of like the mottled look. It might be exactly what I need with certain negatives depending on what my final desired image wants to be.