June 2, 2022

Experiments in wet cyanotype - part 75

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My usual spring gardening activities were delayed this year, due to unseasonable cold and wet weather. So May turned into a very busy and intensive foray into pruning and planting. I moved here in the summer of 2019, and most of the first year was spent rejuvenating existing plantings and fighting a massive thistle invasion; after that I was able to begin to shape things to my liking. This spring it seems like the plan is finally coming together.
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Anyway, part of the pruning involved a leatherleaf viburnum, which has taken off with great enthusiasm and needed some guidance and shaping. The leaves are very, well, leathery, but also have a lot of fine bristles on them. I thought they would be ideal for some long exposure wet cyanotype prints.
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I set up a bunch of them on mineral paper, my current/ongoing obsession, and also did two larger ones on cotton sateen. I added just a small amount of Solarfast green to the chemical mix. This first batch of photos is before exposure.
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Here they are after exposure and before rinsing. 
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The little bristles on the surface of the leaves adhered fairly firmly to the surface of the mineral paper in a lot of spots.

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Rather than try to pick them off and risk damaging the paper, I decided to wait and gently soak the leaf fragments off in the rinse.
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On the sateen prints this was less of a problem.
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Here are the finished prints. They were well worth the little bit of extra trouble!
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There's tons and tons of variation to look and marvel at.
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So unpredictable and so cool.
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The prints on the sateen are a little less wild but no less lovely.
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This last image is number 974 that I've posted since I started documenting my wet cyanotype experiments, so I'm quickly approaching 1,000 with no sign of slowing down. I hope some of you have been enjoying coming along for this ride as much as I've enjoyed sharing it.
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