New Dimensions in Photo Processes, 4th Edition

Chapter 7    Cyanotypes

■  Materials

■  Making the Stock Solution

■  Making a Cyanotype

■  Cyanotype on Fabric

■  Toning Cyanotypes

Cyanotypes, or blueprints, are light- to deep-blue images that can be inexpensively printed onto paper and fabric. Properly made, cyanotypes are permanent and can be combined with other hand-applied emulsions as well as traditional artists’ pigments and pastels. They tend to exhibit less middle tones than other processes described in this book but using the directions in Chapter 6 will overcome this characteristic.

British astronomer and scientist Sir John Herschel (my personal hero, who, in 1819, discovered and freely shared how to “fix” silver-based photos with sodium thiosulfate—the fixer used to this day—and ...