On a sunny Saturday in August members of Blackwell Parish congregated at Newton Pavilion with Dean Leivers to play with cyanotype photography and learn about photography development.
Dean talked us through the way the chemicals are mixed and then applied to paper to create a reactive surface that will develop under the natural light of the sun. We were encouraged to gather natural materials from the park and arrange them in interesting and pleasing ways onto our paper. We had to work quickly as the chemicals began developing as soon as the light touched them.
Once the items were placed onto our cyanotype papers they were trapped under perspex so they didn’t shift about and left in the direct sun.
How do you take a photograph without a camera?
At Dean’s heritage photography workshop we found out.
You harness the power of the sun and a combination of chemical preparations to create some wonderful images!
While the sun did its thing we gathered to listen to Dean tell us about the history of this type of photography and how it was first used to capture impressions of plants and flowers by botanists.
After the talk it was time to go back outside and see what our pictures looked like. We released them from the perspex frames and then passed them through a chemical bath to change the colours from murky green and yellowy brown and into vibrant cyan blue shades.
The patterns and textures revealed were really beautiful and so individual.
We then had a snack of some yummy handmade biscuits decorated in the style of our project while our pictures dried.
The younger participants went off for a chat and quick swing in the playground while the adults lounged in the sunshine.
After our break it was time to try our hand at pin hole cameras.
We were taken into the impromptu dark room constructed by blacking out the windows of the sports changing room. It worked remarkably well and the red bulb bathed us all in a warming sleepy glow while Dean explained about the processes of making photos in a pin hole camera.
Our cameras that day were made from drinks cans. They’d had their tops chopped off and turned into a lid that could slide on and off with the help of a little gaffa tape moulding. It was fun to see that something as seemingly complicated as a camera could be made out of household items.
Dean showed us the pin hole made in the side of the can and the gaffa tape shutter. Then explained about the exposures and angles we needed to consider when taking our photos. It is an imprecise science particularly when working with handmade equipment and trial and error is required to get the timing right at each stage of the process.
After exposing our photo paper in our tin can pin hole cameras they had to be developed in three stages of developing fluid, all in the dark room.
After the photos had gone through three stages of development and dried the negative could then be used to create a final image
The image development would be affected by the length of time in the developing bath and the time being exposed to create the final print so there were unknowns at each stage. Dean talked us through making test prints to help us understand how our image was creating a positive from a negative and could be made darker or lighter at this final stage.
The results were really varied and interesting. Here are some of the best images from the morning and afternoon workshops. I particularly love the image showing the festival tent and us gathered beneath it.
