Cyanotypes

I got my wish from last week’s post and we have indeed had a few more sunny days to see out the school holidays. The sun inspired us to have a go at making cyanotypes and you can see one we made above. Cyanotypes are a simple photographic printing process using the sun. The simplicity of the process belies some of the beautifully sophisticated imagery that can be created with the technique (see the work of Kate Cordsen for example). At its most basic the process involves laying objects on to specially coated paper and leaving it out in the sun to develop. The resulting images are a distinctive blue. We had a lot of fun gleaning our local park and the garden for interesting shapes to try out. The magic of the image emerging from the paper was understandably lost on Finch (aged 2), who ruined a few prints with his shadow when he refused to budge, but Little Owl (aged 7) thought it was fantastic. You can get cheap little kits on line with everything you need to have a go. Well worth a try I’d say!