Back in May, my son Alexandre (and lab assistant!) and I went on a grand adventure to the Oregon Coast, California Redwoods, and a few other stops over a couple of weeks. I’ll be detailing that adventure in more detail in an article here in not too distant future.
Todays topic is alternative processes and large format contact printing. I can only dream of owning an 8x10 large format camera, but the marvels of science are allowing me to play in the game of the masters, if only in a lightweight sort of way.
On the west coast adventure I shot a number of rolls of 120 medium format film which I scanned and proceeded to make 8x10 digital negatives on vellum using my laser printer. I’m pretty pleased with the quality of the negatives using this method.
I’ve also tried using plain bond paper and then waxing the paper to achieve some transparency, I’m not as happy with the results of this method, although I can see there might be a use for the unique look it provides. A lot of the fibres in the paper show up in the image, maybe a little antique look.
Anyways, I thought I would share some of my first reasonably successful attempt at the Cyanotype process and coffee toning. These photographs aren’t perfect to be sure, but it does show that a reasonable black and white photograph can be achieved using the cheapest instant coffee I can find!
Cyanotype is reasonably cheap and easy to get into, I‘ve recently purchased some chemicals from Bostick and Sullivan, the cost per print is under $1 each. The photos shown here I developed on paper I picked up at the Cyanotype Store, it was a great way to test the waters of alternative process photography, the cost for the test was reasonable, but now that I’m moving on to contact printing cyanotypes as a thing, the Bostick and Sullivan solution is the way to go.
I used the sun to expose these prints, I’ve since built a UV light array that allows me to print all year long with some consistency. I’ll do a separate story on the UV array in a future edition.
(And include some more recent prints!)
Enjoy!
Dean Chartier
