Figure 2.1. Snowline Estate, classic cyanotype on Indigo handmade watercolor paper, 45-minute UVBL exposure, 2-minute citric acid wash, 10-minute water wash, 6″ × 10″ © Megan Crawford 2018. Megan Crawford is an alternative process photographer based in northwestern Montana. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Film & Photography from Montana State University in 2017. Her work has exhibited nationally and is featured in various publications including Salted Paper Printing. Crawford’s background in history and her interest in handmade photographs led her to pursue processes such as gum bichromate and salted paper. Her work often focuses on history and landscape: how they interact with modern and historical societies, how they interact with each other. To see more of her work, visit meganlcrawford.com.
Setting Up the Cyanotype Dimroom
Figure 2.2. Where There Is Smoke, cyanotype toned with tea and wine tannin and a bleaching agent (usually highly diluted silver gelatin paper developer or sodium carbonate), 11″ × 14″ © Emma Powell 2012
The cyanotype “dimroom” doesn’t have to be light-tight. It doesn’t require a “darkroom” like the traditional black and white or color darkroom that has to have a safelight or complete darkness. As long as there is no sun shining through a window, normal room light such as that provided by a ceiling light fixture is no problem, because the cyanotype formula is slow to expose and not as sensitive to light. Tip: to test how much room light is safe, coat a small piece of paper with solution. Leave it out for a total of one hour, covering parts of it in 15-minute increments. Rinse the piece of paper for 15 minutes in a tray of water. Note where the paper remains paper white (which may be the entire sheet of paper!) and that will indicate a safe amount of room light time.
Merely two chemicals, one tray, water, and sun can start you on your journey to making excellent cyanotype prints. Thereafter, you’ll want other chemistry and equipment which are outlined in the following pages.
All chemicals should be treated with utmost respect. Go to www.msds.com and download the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) for every chemical used in the dimroom and store them in a readily available notebook. Have the local poison control number handy and prominent! Label all chemistry. Immediately clean up any spills that occur. Always keep hands clean. Don’t look directly into UV bulbs—they are equivalent to bulbs in a tanning bed. Dispose of hazardous materials according to state regulations. Minimize absorption of chemicals through breathing, ingestion, or skin contact. Always keep chemistry locked up and away from children and pets. Have an eyewash kit in the dimroom in case splashes into the eye occur.
• Ferric ammonium citrate (FAC)
• Potassium ferricyanide (PF)
• Oxalic acid (optional)
• Distilled water
• White vinegar or citric acid for development
• Hydrogen peroxide (optional)
• Ferric ammonium oxalate (FAO)
• Potassium ferricyanide (PF)
• Distilled water
• Tween 20™ surfactant
• Ammonium dichromate (optional)
• Citric acid for the formula and development
• Sulfamic acid for development
• Alkalies such as ammonia, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), sodium carbonate (washing soda), or trisodium phosphate (TSP)
• Tannic acid
• Gallic acid
• Pyrogallic acid
• Catechu powder
Figure 2.3. The three chemicals used in these cyanotype processes are (clockwise, from top left) ferric ammonium citrate, potassium ferricyanide, and ferric ammonium oxalate. Ferric ammonium citrate is actually quite chartreuse, but in comparison with the brilliant green of ferric ammonium oxalate it looks brown! If left out in sunlight, it will turn brown quite quickly.
• Na2 Platinum/Palladium Kit for Digital Negatives from Bostick & Sullivan (bostick-sullivan.com). It comes with 10 ml 5% Na2, 25 ml palladium, 25 ml ferric oxalate, a developer and a clear, enough for 25 8″ × 10″ prints.
• Di-EDTA, citric acid, Heico Permawash for clearing, if desired.
• Computer with Photoshop
• Epson Ultrachrome inkjet printer
• Contact printing frame no smaller than 11″ × 14″. Buy one with a split hinge back so the progress of the print can be checked
• UVBL exposure unit: Edwards makes a really nice one (eepjon.com) and so does Freestyle Photo (freestylephoto.biz)
• Digital scale accurate to 0.1 g. These are not terribly expensive. There are some weight-to-volume measurements throughout this book that are accurate enough, but a scale is best
Figures 2.4–2.12. From left to right, top to bottom, aids to the cyanotype dimroom: my favorite squatty plastic “wine” cups available at any grocery store for mixing, soaking, weighing, and measuring; citric acid, sulfamic acid, and vinegar for development; the Stouffer 31-step film step wedge which I use to calculate all exposure times; my favorite Connoisseur 150 Series hake brushes; litmus strips to keep tabs on pH when cyanotype printing; my Olfa rotary cutter and clear gridded plastic ruler for cutting and measuring paper; a variety of colored pencils useful for spotting a print: green-blues to red-blues, percentage sets of cool grays, warm grays, and French grays to add density if necessary underneath the color desired.
• Plastic trays, minimum size 11″ × 14″, for developing and toning
• Tongs
• Hot plate and thermometer for new cyanotype
• Brown plastic storage bottles, 500 ml and 1000 ml, for storing bulk chemistry and toners
• Beakers: 50 ml, 100 ml, 250 ml, 500 ml, 1000 ml
• Graduates: 10 ml, 25 ml, 50 ml
• Brown glass eyedropper bottles, 100 ml
• Funnels, various sizes
• Glass stirring rods, one or two
• Hair dryer
• Hand towels, washcloths, apron
• Vinyl-coated metal baby hangers and plastic clothespins to hang prints to dry. The hangers are about a foot wide. The plastic retains no chemistry, and the print hangs perpendicular to the shower curtain rod (my usual “clothesline”), so many prints can be hung that way, only several inches apart. The hangers can also be hung on each other in pyramid fashion for more space
• Scissors
• Set of plastic teaspoon measures to include ¼″, ½″, teaspoon, and 1 tablespoon
• Stop watch/timer on watch or cell phone
• Stouffer step wedge calibrated in ⅓ stop increments
• Connoisseur 150 Series 2″ stitched ferrule hake brushes. They have stitched ferrules instead of metal—metal tends to rust when left soaking in water for a long time. After an initial period of use, shedding is minimal or nonexistent. They get better with age. After every use, immediately put the brush in water with the bristles down. Tip: if excess shedding occurs, try gently scratching the hairs of the brush on a piece of sandpaper, to take away the loose hairs. Also, take a piece of paper and paste around the ferrule, a little bit higher than the ferrule and fill this paper “well” with super glue and let dry.
• Pictorico Premium (not Ultra), Fixxons, Arista, Inkpress, or other suitable OHP film
• 8.5″ × 11″ notebook sleeves to store negatives
• Litmus paper to test acidity/alkalinity
• 9 oz clear plastic wide-mouth “wine” cups, the small, squatty ones for mixing, weighing chemicals on the gram scale, and soaking brushes. Indispensable, infinitely reusable, they fit a 2″ or 3″ brush perfectly, only weigh about 9 g, and are rinse ’n’ go. You can also use cupcake papers that come in two sizes, normal cupcake size and one much smaller. There are also weigh boats or “watch glasses” from a scientific supply house
• Coffee filters for filtering out mold in Solution A or in making the new cyanotype formula
• Color pencils for retouching (e.g. Prismacolor China Blue, Copenhagen Blue, Indanthrone Blue, etc., Derwent Prussian Blue)
• Scotch Brand 810 green plaid box “magic” tape or Scotch Brand 811 blue box removable tape to tape a negative in place
• Rubylith tape, used for taping off borders so they don’t expose, in ¼″–2″ wide rolls available here: http://www.uline.com/BL_6413/3M-616-Lithographers-Tape?keywords=rubylith. It is $34 for 72 yards, enough for 72 8″ × 10″ prints. Tip: add a very slight black border to each negative (less than ¼″) and then further mask the edge with the rubylith; this makes it easier to get the edge straight. If you put the tape on the contact frame, the edge will be softened. Also, it is very sticky, so get some of that adhesive dulled by sticking it to your pants a few times first. You can also use Kleenedge or Loparex low tack tape for masking borders during coating, if desiring a no-border look (Kleenedge doesn’t hold back enough light when exposing)
• 2H pencils for recording all information on the edge of the print and signing
• Black permanent sharpies for marking negatives
• Plastic, latex, or nitrile gloves
• Olfa rotary cutter and self-sealing cutting mat, largest size available, and a 6″ × 24″ see-thru gridded plastic quilting ruler; of all the tools in the darkroom, these are tops. The blade of the cutter is sharp and accurate. The self-sealing mat is impervious to the cuts of the blade. The plastic 6″ × 24″ gridded ruler is perfect for trimming paper accurately (if displaying edges, use a tear bar). These three tools are available in any sewing store. Buy a circular Olfa blade sharpener while you’re at it
• Portatrace light box, or an LED light pad, useful for registration if doing cyanotype over platinum. Other methods of registration are pin registration with a two-hole registration punch, and the ¼″/0 pin height registration pins. A guerrilla registration method is just pins and a piece of cardboard, pinning all negatives in registration at once to create holes
• Skoy cloths or paper towels. You will want to have some quick way of mopping up a drop here and there, and Skoys are incredibly absorbent and infinitely reusable, not to mention much kinder to the environment than paper towels
1 gram = 15.4323 grains
1 grain = 0.0648 gram
1 ounce = 28.4 grams
1 pound = 454 grams
1 gram = 0.0353
ounces 1000
grams = 2.2 pounds
An important measurement is 1 teaspoon = 5 ml. The next is British volume is 28.413 ml to the ounce; US volume is 29.574 ml to the ounce. Throughout the book formulas will be given in milliliters (ml) and occasionally teaspoons. See unitconversion.org.
1 teaspoon = |
⅓ tablespoon |
5 ml |
|
75–100 drops |
|
3 teaspoons = |
1 tablespoon |
½ ounce |
|
15 ml |
|
2 tablespoons = |
1 ounce |
30 ml |
|
8 ounces = |
48 teaspoons |
16 tablespoons |
|
1 cup |
|
237 ml |
|
2 cups = |
1 pint |
473 ml |
|
2 pints = |
32 ounces |
1 quart |
|
1 (scant) liter/946 ml |
|
4 quarts = |
128 ounces |
1 gallon |
|
3785 ml |
Ounces to milliliters: × 29.57
Milliliters to ounces: × 0.0338
Liter × 2.10 = pints
Liter × 1.06 = quarts
Liter × 0.26 = gallons
1 liter = 33.81 ounces or 1.057 quarts
1 cc water = 1 g = 1 ml — all interchangeable
Artcraft Chemicals
800.682.1730
B&H Photo
877.848.1244
Bostick and Sullivan
877.817.4320
Fixxons OHP film
714-738-9009
Freestyle Photographic Supplies
800.292.6137
Photographers’ Formulary
800.922.5255
Step wedges
Stouffer Industries
574.252.5772
UVBL lightboxes and bulbs
Jon Edwards UVBL lightboxes:
Freestyle markets a wonderful lightbox:
For replacement UVBL bulbs:
United States
A.I. Friedman (New York)
All Media Art Supply (Ohio)
Art Center Memphis (Tennessee)
Art Supply Warehouse (California)
Artist & Craftsman (all over US)
Binders (Georgia, North Carolina)
Bostick & Sullivan (New Mexico)
Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff (North Carolina)
David Art Center (Louisiana)
DaVinci Artist Supply (New York)
Dick Blick (all over US)
Dolphin Papers (Indiana)
Freestyle Photographic (California)
Graphic Chemical (Illinois)
Hiromi Paper (California)
Hollander’s (Michigan)
Hyatt’s (New York)
Jerry’s Artarama (all over US)
McClain’s Printmaking Supplies (Oregon)
Michaels (all over US)
Pygmalion’s Art Supplies (Indiana)
Renaissance Graphic Arts (Pennsylvania)
Takach Paper (New Mexico)
Talas (New York)
Twinrocker (Indiana)
www.twinrockerhandmadepaper.com
Utrecht (All over US)
Canada
Above Ground Art Supplies
www.abovegroundartsupplies.com
Artists’ Emporium
Curry’s
Japanese Paper Place
Opus Art Supplies
Studio Six
Europe
De Middelste Molen (Netherlands)
Garza Papel (Spain)
John Purcell (England)
Les Papiers de Lucas (France)
Moulin de Larroque (France)
Peter van Ginkel (Netherlands)
Polymetaal (Netherlands)
Ruscombe Paper (France)
Schut Papier (Netherlands)
Van Beek Art Supplies (Netherlands)
Figure 2.13. Khetarra, Sharing Water from the Deep Well, cyanotype and linen tape, 1120 × 740 mm © Susan Purdy 2018. “Khetarra is a folding, gridded, portable cyanotype work created in April 2018, under the Saharan sun on a Moroccan journey, appointing the colour blue as a motif and catalyst for travel and creative play. An adventurous, open-ended approach to investigating the colour blue inevitably drew my attention towards water. In discovering the unique system of wells, called khetarra in rural Morocco, and learning about the remarkable water management skills of nomadic Berber tribes in their dry land, I made a work that responds, in blueprint, to the intricate social cooperation required to share an essential resource, and my powerful apprehension of the significance in such action.” Susan Purdy lives and works in the Strzelecki Ranges, in Gippsland, on the Southeastern corner of Australia. Her work is focused upon reinterpretation of early photographic practices. It is in a number of significant public collections including the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. To see more of her work, visit www.susanpurdy.net and https://culturaltoursmorocco.com/2018-art-photography-with-susan-purdy/.