What is a Cyanotype? Cyanotype is a photographic blue(cyan)print. The word cyan comes from a greek meaning, dark blue substance. There is no need for a darkroom for this photo because the paper that is used is aloud to be exposed to normal light. Placing bold and thick objects will show the most on the paper, washing it afterwards with water will help bring it out more. This process uses the sun and iron salt solutions instead of a darkroom.
The process we went through of creating a cyanotype is firstly we each got a piece of photo-sensitive paper, this meant it could be exposed to the normal light. We then placed our objects directly onto the paper outside and left it for 10 minutes. After those minutes we took the objects off and the results were quite good. The objects that were bold, it had came out really well, but the leaves i placed on didn't come out very well because it didn't stay in the same place, the leaf kept on moving around because of the wind. When creating a cyanotype objects placed need to stay still to get good results. After taking the objects off we then went back to the class and ran cold water over the paper, then the paper started to get more bluer and we could see the outline of the objects better.
I enjoyed this quite a lot, it was a fun experience and I hope to do more in the future.
Anna Atkins: She was a English photographer and trained as a botanist, Anna Atkins developed an interest in photography recording botanical specimens and publishing a book of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. This publication was one of the first uses of light-sensitive materials to illustrate a book. Instead of traditional letterpress printing, the book's handwritten text and illustrations were created by the cyanotype method. She printed part one of the published book, printing all of the pages as a cyanotype.
Anna learned directly about the invention of photography through her correspondence with its inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot. Although she owned a camera, she used only the cyanotype method to produce all of her botanical images. With the assistance of Anne Dixon, she created albums of cyanotype photogenic drawings of her botanical specimens. She learned the cyanotype printing method through the inventor, the astronomer and scientist a family friend, Sir John Herschel.