Cyanotypes

Since college, I have been interested in the contrast in styles between my daily "run and gun" photojournalism work and the methodical pace of working with large format cameras. Taking a 4x5 camera into the natural world has been a mixing of two things I like to do. I found myself never taking the time to enlarge the 4x5 black and white negatives from these excursions. Often, I have only made contact prints to see what I had done. I wanted to make these the "finished" prints. I started to look around for a process that would make me happy.

A friend suggested cyanotypes, one of the first permanent photographic processes. Sir John Herschel invented the process in 1842. The blue color comes from the iron salts used to make the sensitizer. This sensitizer is brushed onto paper, dried, and then the negative and paper are exposed by sunlight or an artifical ultra-violet light. The print is developed by washing in plain water and hung to dry. This first portfolio of prints are from 4x5 negatives. Since the print is only as big as the negative, I am now learning to use an 8x10 camera.