Recent Experiments

I’ve been having a relaxing summer, and probably not putting in as much studio time as I should be. I am working on a couple of different things, mainly trying to print alternative process photos on different surfaces. Not a lot of success yet, as you’ll see, but I’ve got more things to try.

Recently, I’ve been working at making cyanotype prints on pieces of plywood. I swear I’ve seen that done before, but can’t seem to find any examples in any of my books on alternative processes.

Here’s one of the images I’m working with, printed on paper. While it needs a little work, I can get a decent print fom the negative I printed. The image, by the way, is something I shot a couple of years ago. I have a bunch of old magazines from the 50’s in my studio, and this part of a page from one of them shot on a light table, so that the images on both sides of the page show.


For my first attempt attempt at cyanotype printing on plywood, I just coated the wood, let it dry (it seemed to take a long time to dry, similar to coating fabric for printing), and exposed the negative. As you can see below, it didn’t work out so well.


It looks a little underexposed (again, like printing on fabric, which I’ve found takes longer to expose than paper). It’s also difficult to read the image. Part of that is from is the roughness of the wood, so I sanded a piece, coated it (the sanded piece dried more quickly) and exposed it. I increased exposure by a couple of minutes as well.


This one came out better than the first one, but still not that great. While it’s easier to see the image here than on the first one I did, it’s nowhere close to where I want it. I’m going to try sizing the wood next, probably with gelatin. I’ll let you know how it turns out.