Transcripts
1. Introduction: My name is Ben,
I'm an artist and educator and welcome
to this class, advanced cyanotype techniques to improve your final prints. In this class, we're gonna
be taking your skills of how to make a good
cyanotype print and take it one step further and
try two more techniques that can improve your final prints
to really make them shine. These are techniques that
are going to require some experimentation on
your part because there's some variables at
play that are gonna be specific to your location. And so I'm gonna
walk you through how you can set up that
experiment to determine exactly the results you want and know for sure the
results you're gonna get. So while this class
isn't as much a step-by-step to
get these results. It is showing you a method
that then you can use with every cyanotype you
make from now on in order to get the
best possible results. And I think these two techniques
we're gonna look at are an interesting
combination for you because one starts
from the coating. Is there an optimal way to
be coding your prints to get the richest, best colors? And the second technique
is really going to be looking at the
developing process. And is there something we can add to the development in order to get the tones to be
exactly what you want. So all of these techniques
may add a little bit of complexity and extra
thought into the process. They are going to give you an
extra degree of control of these extra variables you
can be locking down in order to make the prints
you want to make. By way of what are we literally going to
make in this class? Well, I have some examples
here just real quick, right? Here's one set. These are three examples
and these are related to the different ways of coding your paper and can that
make a difference? Then on the other side, we have the development and we have different concentrations
of developing with something other
than just water, which is going to control time, it's gonna control contrast. And so while any of these individual prints
we might be looking at in this class may
not be incredible. It's more about learning
how to use those methods in combination with the incredible images
that you do want to me. It's about giving you that
Swiss army knife approach that you come up with an image that you want to
be a little bit different, that you have the tools in order to make it a
little bit different. So I'm excited to be jumping
into these two methods in this class because it gives you control over
more of the process. And as an artist yourself, that means that you're able to make the images
you want to make. That's what I'm all about,
helping you do that. In the next video,
we're gonna talk about the supplies you need. They're really simple,
really accessible, so don't worry about that. And then we're going
to jump right into, how do you do these things? Why would we want to do them? All those big questions? So let's jump to it.
2. Supplies: Alright, welcome back to this video here we're going to talk about the supplies you will need for this project of advanced cyanotype
techniques. And again, there's
two techniques. One that's involved with the coding and one that's
involved with the development. The good news is you basically
use almost everything from the regular cyanotype process plus one very common
household ingredient. So this video is more of
an advanced technique. So I'm going to assume you have a pretty solid basis for understanding
how cyanotype works, how to make a basic
cyanotype, all of that. If you don't have that, I recommend jumping into one of my early videos,
cyanotype 101102103. Kind of explain
the whole process in detail from making
your first print, through making negatives, through mixing your
chemistry, all of that. If you don't have
the foundations, start there first before coming here to this
more advanced video, where we got that other way, you need all the basic
cyanotype supplies. First of course, you need
your chemistry of cyanotype. I have the Jaccard kit
you can get on Amazon. It's worked really well for me and you get a ton of
prints out of this. So it's a really great deal. You need all the basic things
to be measuring, mixing. You need a brush,
you need paper, and of course you need a
frame in order to print it. You have to decide whether
you're gonna be printing outside or if you
have a UV printer, like the one I made, like the one I made in one
of my previous classes. That's a great solution that lets you print
anytime of the day. And then of course you're
going to need to be able to be rinsing these
prints to develop them. I have some little
trays like this, of course any sort of
container will do. But you are going to
want some sort of tray that can hold the amount of water
you're working with, not just letting
water run on it. For the particular
method we're using, some sort of tray or
container will be necessary. All right, So all that
stuff is normal so far, just your normal
cyanotype process. The only material we are
adding is going to be vinegar. White vinegar is
going to be part of our development bath. And so we'll see how this
affects things later on. But white vinegar, one
of these big things, really cheap, really accessible. You might even just
have it in the pantry. So you can just use that to
start with the last button. Not least, of course you
need something to print. Now personally, I find
these methods may be the most beneficial when
I'm dealing with negatives. Because you start dealing with like density
of the final print and the contrast maybe becomes a little bit more
important in most cases. But if you want to try this with doing a leaf print or
something like that, there probably are some
benefits to that as well. So I don't want to say
you shouldn't do that. But if you have a
negative, you can try this out with, I
would recommend it. And it's even better if
you have a few negatives. For instance, I'm
gonna be printing with three negatives at a time. That way I have exactly the same exposure
for some of these. And so in the
experimental process, it might be helpful for
you to have three of the same negative so you can
really see the results. So those are all the supplies. And in the next
video we're gonna be jumping right
into the process. So let's get going.
3. Coating Methods: Alright, welcome back. In this video we're
gonna be talking about the coding method. That is this sort of
advanced technique in order to control some
variables in your prints. Here's the theory. And then we'll talk about what, what does that mean from what
we're actually going to do? So the theory is some people feel like
they get denser prints, they get richer blues. If they double coat the print, meaning they coat on one layer of the
sensitized solution. And then they wait till it dries most of the way till
it gets mad at least. And then they cut it again. So they've doubled coated. And there's all kinds of
threads on the Internet. It's documented in some books, so it is a viable technique
to get richer blues. However, there are
some people who think it's not worth the
extra trouble. Some of the things that
you could run into are, you know, you're getting
dragged chemistry wet again. And so there's the
potential for some sort of like what's the word like cross-contamination
almost like that. You're getting the chemistry wet and then drying it and then wet. So it's almost going to
look like a wet cyanotype. You have the potential to mess with the surface
of your paper because it's wet for longer and you're brushing
it for longer. So it could you could start to scrape up the surface if
you're not careful. So that's one variable that you'd have to
be careful with. Another thing that I've read is there's artists saying, well, they felt like they
got the same amount of density by just making sure that they brushed in all four
directions that are horizontal, vertical, and then criss-cross one way, crisscrossed the other. And when they compared
that with double coding, they saw the same results. Then of course there's the old. Have I noticed anything in my single coded sino types
that feels like it's missing, Does it feel like it's not dark enough that I'm
trying to improve. All these questions are
sort of at play here. And here's what I've learned. Generally for myself. I don't see enough of a
difference in most of my prints to go through the
extra effort of coding twice. Generally, when I coat, I do brush from multiple angles. So I'm probably getting the
benefit of that technique. Even though when I originally started using that technique, I wasn't trying to
do anything special. It was just kind of naturally
how I went about brushing. Third, there are
other variables at play with the final
density of your print. How rich the blue is. That might affect things
more than double coding. For instance, the
finish of your paper, There's all kinds of
conversation around the specific paper that you use and what is it sized with? What is, how acidic is it? All? Those things will
affect the density, the pH level of the
water you're using to develop will affect
the final density of the print because if there
is enough chlorine in it, it'll start to bleach if
you rinse it for too long. So there's all kinds of variables that
are messing with it. So all that to say, the reason I'm approaching
this class width even more of an experimental
nature than normal is because these variables I
can't determine for you. You have to say, well,
what paper am I using? What am I using? What is my specific method of coding that I'm
going to be inserting. All of those things
are gonna come into play to make your final image. I didn't even mention
the density of your negative comes into
play there as well. I want you to experiment with
this because in your case, or for some specific images, it is probably worth it. But it's not necessarily
always going to be worth it. And so I don't want to say, I don't want to give
you the impression that this is something I always do or that I always
recommend because honestly, I don't always do
it for a lot of, like I said, for most
of the cyanotype. So I make, I don't double coat and I've been pretty
happy with those results. Other people I know
have a hard time getting the colors dark enough. So double coding really
helps with that. So your mileage may vary. But I do want to
show you the method that I used in
order to test this. And it's pretty straightforward. So it kinda looks like
what you would expect. So here I have already
coded the paper here. And basically I
went about coding the first layer
just once, right? So I coded here one time. I have this little marked
with a two because this is the area that I'm going
to be double coding. I came over here and this
was the crisscross method. So I went horizontally, vertically or
diagonally one way, diagonally the other way. And the idea there
is that you're just, you're brushing the solution into the fibers from
all different angles. And so it's really getting as much as possible into the paper. Then last, this method, I just tried to keep it
as simple as possible. I just did horizontal
strokes really light over the surface as a
single code solution. By that time I let it
dry for a few minutes. And what you're looking for for the double coding method is once the original layer
gets dry to a matte look, there might be maybe a
slight sat Annie look, but you want it to be mostly dry and not dry for like ours. You want it to be just dry, like probably 510 minutes tops. And then you just
brush it over again. And remember at this point, you do want to be
gentle with the surface because it's already got
a lot of water in there. If you are pushing hard, you're liable to brush
up some of those fibers. And that's going to mess with the final
look of the image. So you just brush
over it a second time. Then you let it dry. And so I wound up with a single paper with in
three different methods. I have marked on the side here which
one is double coated, which one was cross coded
in which was single? And so now I'm going
to set this up, each one with its own
negative in order to print. So let's go ahead
and get that setup. All right, so what
I have here are three negatives
I've used before. They're all the same image. Just prints off of a laser
printer there nothing amazing, but they were printed off of
the same piece of papers, so they should be relatively
the same negative. And I'm just going to
line them up here, one on top of the other. Because I printed this so that they should be able
to more or less lineup. I'm lining this up. We're not worried about making final
prints for this class. You'll get there eventually. And in the final video
we'll talk about what does this mean for the final
prints you'll be making. We're worried about
using this sort of scientific method in a way to discover what
variables are at play, what results they give you
and how you can use it. So we're not really worried
about the final image as much as we are following
the method that will tell us what this is, what this technique is
bringing to the table for you. Okay, so now I have three images roughly centered on each of the different
methods of coding. And now I'm just gonna
go ahead and print it. So I'm gonna use my UV printer. Once again, I'll do
a little plug here, this making this printer, the UV printer from
this LED tape, has really changed the way I
go about making cyanotype. It's made it so much easier to get into the studio
and make a print. And I highly recommend if you're wanting to
make more cyanotype, this is absolutely
the way to do it. And I have that video. It's really a pretty
simple process. The UV box I have makes an
exposure and about 15 minutes. And so I have those
three exposures that are gonna be
happening simultaneously. I'm just going to plug this in, set a timer for 15 minutes, and then we'll go to developing to see the results. We get.
4. Developing Method pt. 1: Hi there and welcome back. In this video, we're
gonna be talking about the advanced development method, specifically using vinegar in order to develop your prints. This method is going to have two effects on your final print. And they kind of
work hand in hand in that you need to do some math ahead of time order
to figure out how it works. Because the two effects are one, if you develop in just vinegar, it cuts the exposure time
in half. That's right. So if you normally do
a ten minute exposure, will then if you use
straight vinegar, you can actually do a
five-minute exposure. And the exposure should look the same if you develop
that in vinegar. That's effect number one. An effect number two is that it lowers the contrast
of the final image. What do I mean by contrast? Well, really, this is a
normal print right here. And cyanotype tends
to be high contrast in that it doesn't have
necessarily the full tonal range. So things that are going towards white might
go all the way white and things that
are going sort of dark gray will go
all the way dark. And so it tends to have a
little bit of a narrow range. And so contrast then will look
something more like this. The bottom image
you can see there's a lot more kind of
grays in the image. Or here's another one. You can see there's a
lot more mid-tone values going on in that bottom
image than the top one. The top one is much
higher contrast. The bottom one is
lower contrast. And so that is what I'm talking about when
I'm talking about contrast in the image and being able to
control that contrast. What's tricky here
is that you need to be thinking ahead
about what sort of contrast you want in your
final print in order to then calculate how much time
you need to expose for. So once again, for this project, I'm not recommending
that you start by doing a final print for this. What I'm recommending
you're doing for this particular
video is that you make essentially a
test strip where you can kind of get
the feel for what this process is going
to do to your prints. I'm gonna be making
three prints at different times and different strengths of the
vinegar solution. And that's what I
think you should do. So just follow along
with me step-by-step. As I said before, we
actually get into doing it. We have to do some math. And doing that math
requires that, you know, how much a normal exposure developed with just
water would take. And in my case, I'm
going to be using my UV printing box inside. And I know that a good
exposure takes 15 minutes. Now, if you're dealing with printing outside
while you might need to do a quick test strip the
day of in order to know if you have a five-minute, 10-minute exposure or
something like that, but you need to know
what a full exposure developed in water is. From there, then we can figure out what we're doing
for this test. And what I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna do one normal print, one just developed in water. So that means I'm
gonna do 15 minutes. Then I'm gonna do
another print that is a ratio of half water
to half vinegar. That is going to be at
three-quarters of the time. So in my case, 15 minutes
as a full exposure. So 11.25 minutes is the
three-quarters of an exposure. And then last I'm going
to do a straight vinegar, vinegar only development, which means that's half of
the full exposure. So in my case,
that's 7.5 minutes. Now, again, of
course you're gonna have to adjust those times for your particular
exposure setting. But that's gonna be the
pattern we're following. A full exposure,
three-quarters and a half. And how am I going to
be going about actually making those exposures,
those different prints? Well, in order to make
the most of my time, I'm actually going to be doing
all three prints at once. Then as I go, I'm treating it
like a test strip. So I'm going to expose all
of them for 7.5 minutes. Then I'll cover up one of
them and expose a little bit longer until I get to the
11 and a quarter minutes. And then I'll cover
up those two. And then I'll just expose the
last one, the full amount. And then I'll be
ready to develop them in their different solutions. If that sounds confusing, well, I'm gonna walk through
it by actually doing those steps right now so
you can follow along. Once again, I'm setting up
all my negatives together. I'm gonna go grab my
sensitized paper and put it on here and start
the exposure process. All right. We are
officially done exposing. Just in case you weren't sure
what I was doing in there. Basically, I expose for 7.5
minutes the whole thing. Then I cover it up.
This first one. That one only got a
7.5 minute exposure. Then I expose for another
three minutes and 45 seconds. Then I moved it up
and covered that one. That one was done exposing. After that, I got
three-quarters of the exposure. Then I did another
three minutes and 35 seconds for the last one
to get the full 15 minutes. This is now ready to develop using different
solutions of vinegar. So let's go ahead
and go over there.
5. Developing Method pt. 2: I have exposed picker and I have each one
marked with the time, so I know which one was full amount,
three-quarters in half. And I'm gonna cut
these apart so I can develop them separately. The one we're starting with is going to be this one that was exposed for the full
normal amount of time. And we're just going
to be developing it in normal water as a control, I'm going to be just
using one cup of liquid to develop each one just so that it's not
an extra variable. Let me just clean
that out. Get water. Now I'm gonna go
ahead and put it in. When I normally
developed cyanotype, I normally do it
under running water, but it's entirely
legitimate to just develop it in a tray like this
in standing water, at least as a first bath. I always like to at
least do kind of like a final rinse under running water if I do develop like this. Just want to be
agitating. As you go. You can see it has already
rinsed really pretty far. There's still a little bit
of a yellow yellow to that. Just going to keep looking
pretty well developed. It doesn't seem to be
changing much anymore. Let's just give it
one more minute. This is more or less developed. I'm going to move
over to a final rinse in this tray in the
sink over here. So it can really get, make sure every last bit of
the chemistry is out of. The next exposure were doing was the three-quarters of
time or in my case, 11 minutes and 25 seconds. And we're gonna be doing
that with a half water, half white vinegar solution. Again, I want to end up
with a total of one cup. I'm going to do a half
cup of water first. Then a half cup of vinegar that's mixed around. And then it's the same
process with this one. See, that's developing
pretty nicely. And after developing your
normal amount of time, then this appears
that just needs, again a final rinse. So I'm gonna go ahead
and dump that in there. For the final print. We did half the amount of time, which means now we
are going to be doing a straight vinegar wash. One cup of vinegar into the tray. And our print goes straight in. This appears to be
fully developed. Now. We're gonna go with
straight into final rinse. All right, once that rinses,
I'm going to let them dry. And then in the final video, we're gonna look at the
results of all these images. Talk about what that
means for your printing, which ones you like, and what we can do
for the future.
6. Final Analysis pt. 1: Hey there and welcome back. This is our final video
where we're talking about the analysis of these
finished prints, these sort of test
prints that have brought you through
the process of making. And remember, the point
of this is not to make these little three test
prints and then you're done. The point of this
is then to figure out how you can possibly use these methods in order to make your ideal print whatever
that is in your situation. So we are, the project
of this class is to walk you through how to do this and then
it's up to you to apply it. We're gonna go ahead and
jump right in looking up close at some of
the results we got. Some of them are gonna be different for you
than they are for me. Because once again,
the reason why I can't just tell you the
method and then say you should do it this way
exactly to get these results is because there are a
lot of variables at play. So I'm going to talk about
the results that I got. If you've got a little
bit different one, that's probably okay. But you're gonna use
that information to make your finished prints. Anyway. Actually, one more thing I
decided to make a final video, a bonus video in this class that talks about one extra
thing that might help you in this experimental process that I haven't talked about
in any other video series. And so when you're
done in this one, the analysis, make sure you
stay tuned for the last one. And I think that'll really help you get
on the right track. Alright, so here I have my
two sets of three prints, the two different methods
we used of the vinegar, as well as the different
coding methods. And we're going to
look through each one and just look
at what happened, see what we can learn. So I'll move these
out of the way first. And let's look at our results. In front of you. We have these are the ones
where we exposed for different amounts
of time and then we use the different amounts
of vinegar in order to get different results. You can see these
look very different, especially the difference
between the no vinegar. This was our normal print using just water
with the full amount of exposure versus
the 100% vinegar. You can see there's a pretty significant difference
in that print, but it's not that
different of an exposure. That's what's crazy. So the number one variable is, you can see how vinegar changes the amount
of time required. Suddenly, this is
a 15-minute print. This is a 7.5 minute print. And from a you can see even on the side over here
like the amount of blue, the deepness of the blue. They're actually
the same exposure, which that's what is
supposed to happen. So we know this was
working properly. So now what we're looking at
is the variable of contrast. And you can see some
different things here. This ends up being a very
high contrast image. Because you can see the darkest shadows here really in the shadows
of these trees. There's still quite a
bit of detail here, but up in the sky, right where
there's these clouds are, they're supposed to be clouds. It just goes pure white. We could try to correct for that with changing the negative, we could try to correct for it with the amount of print
time or something like that. But the problem was cyanotype is that it does
have a narrow tonal range. And so sometimes a
high contrast image, you just can't get
all the tones in there unless you do something
to change the contrast. And you can change the
contrast in the negative. And now we've learned you can change the contrast chemically. You can change it with vinegar. So let's move this one over
to the side a little bit. And we're going to look
just at these two. This one up top, this was half an exposure
with full vinegar. You can see we have much lower contrasts
like the background, while there's detail in the clouds in there and we have changes from lighter to darker. There's still lots
of detail in there, but it is very, very soft. And even if you look at the trees where this is the
darkest area of the print, it seems like it has
gotten a little softer. And so you do begin
in this case with that full amount of contrast
applied with the vinegar, you start to lose the contrast
between the foreground, the darkest area, and the
background versus this one. This is the one that was exposed for three-quarters
of the time. And we didn't even one-to-one
ratio of vinegar to water. This one to me is a nice
balance between the two. There is less contrast, especially in the sky, right? In the lighter areas
we actually have. A tonal range up
here that's visible. There's nothing that goes pure white down in the
water area too. There's nothing that
goes pure white. But the dark areas are still
as dark as I need to be in. It sets this, this set of trees, these islands, apart
from the background. These three prints, to me, probably the middle
one is the winner. I'm happiest with
how that came out. What does this mean in terms of using vinegar and contrast? Well, in my case, I could take this information
and just say, well, I should plan on doing a three-quarters of
whatever our full exposure is and then use that one-to-one ratio
of vinegar to water. If that's sort of I
could make that my new normal of how to
make a cyanotype print. Now, there's a few
other variables at play though that I know
are changing things. One is the negative and the printer I have
printing my negatives, create a more limited
print from the get-go. So I could say, well, I don't always want to be
printing with vinegar. It's a little bit more work. It's not as easy as just
rinsing under tap water. I could go in and try
to fix my negative, make it a little lower
contrast on the, on the curves are on the levels meter I can
bring in those sides of the histogram so that I'm
not trying to print at the far edges of the gray scale. And if that's gibberish to
you, don't worry about it. We haven't really
talked about it enough. So I could go in and try
to fix it other ways. Or I can try to find
a happy medium. I can go in and say, All right, what happens if I just say, most of the time when I'm
printing in my UV box, it's a 15-minute exposure. What happens if instead
I print 414 minutes and I add in two tablespoons of vinegar to one cup of water
or something like that. And then I go in and I try some, some prints, try a few
different negatives, and look at the comparison
between them and see does that in adding just enough of that reduced contrast to keep some more detail
in the highlights, while still keeping enough
contrast in the final image. Then if that doesn't work, I could do maybe a
little less time or maybe I could do a
little more vinegar or all those amounts I can
play with until I find some, some sort of new normal
for the way I could print in order to bring a
little bit less contrast into my final image. And what I've found is sometimes the contrast of cyanotype
works beautifully, right? It works. The high contrast really makes the blue pop and the white versus the
blue is really good. But more often than not, it's a little too high
contrast to reproduce a really good landscape image or something that has
a lot of subtle tones, you end up losing part of that because of the inherent
nature of cyanotype. My resolution is that I am
planning to start using more vinegar in the way
I developed my prints. Because I like being
able to inherently control the contrast at the
very end of the process, regardless of how
my negative is, I can always go in there and add a little bit more contrast
control to my final image. And that's what I
really like about this vinegar developing process. So that's my takeaway
that I want to plan to be using vinegar
more consistently. I'm curious to hear
what your takeaway is depending on the
results you got. You might like the results. You might not have liked the results with your
particular image. That's the last thing
to keep in mind here with this process is that it really depends on each individual image
and each negative. How high-contrast or low
contrast is the image? That's gonna change
how much you need contrast control at
the developing stage. Okay, so let's go
ahead and now look at the coding method
differences and see what differences there were.
7. Final Analysis pt. 2: Here we have three images
and looking at them quickly, you'd say they're all very
similar, which is good. That's what we're shooting for. But we're going to look a little closer and
we can start to see some minor differences
that might help you decide which one
you're going to go with. So let's look at each one. This one is standard. This is just sort of very quickly brushed on side-to-side. And this is a good print, meaning there's a high amount of contrasts like
we would expect, that you can look over here the darkest darks that
were outside the negative. That has a nice rich
blue tone to it. And over inside the
negative, right? There's nice tones in there. We got nice contrast. So that's a good print. But then when we compare that
to the print just above it, this one is the one that we did, the crisscross pattern where I did side-to-side up
and down, criss-cross, crisscross the other way with the idea that we're
just trying to get that sensitize solution really into the fibers as
good as possible. So you get the darkest possible
print and looking at this like especially if
you compare there, I'll keep them in
the right order. The tree area, if you look
at the trees like this, is noticeably a
little bit denser, a little bit darker than this. This has a little bit more
depth to the shadows than this and same thing with the
background of the mountain. So this does appear
that it got darker. And you could say, well,
one, negative two, the next is your
printer calibrated. That certainly
could be an issue, except that I did an
exact copy of this test before shooting this class
and I got the same results. The single simple coat
was slightly lighter, slightly less dense than the one that I did,
the crisscross codon. Okay. Now the one we've all
been waiting for, it's the double coated ones. So if we just look
at that closely, this is again, another
fine exposed print. But there are some
issues with this one. And again, I've repeated
this in my situation. This is something that
seems to be true. And that is two things. One, with the particular
paper I'm using, which is pretty standard
watercolor paper, I do get more staining
with the double coding. I'm, I'm not sure actually how well you're able to
see that there is a slight yellow
tinge to this print, the other ones that's gone,
I was able to rinse it out, but this one kept
a little bit of that yellowish greenish
in the highlights. And that doesn't seem
to be something I can fix now there are
chemicals solutions to that, but I really don't
want to get into that. That's one thing. Now, I know people encounter
that problem and they fixed it by getting a
higher caliber paper. But again, I'm not that
interested in having to do something extreme if the results aren't that much
better than what I'm getting with normal paper. So that's problem
number one for me. And then problem
number two is it actually looks
like it's actually a slightly lighter
print maybe than just the single coded print. Like, I don't know if it's not
lighter than its the same. And again, it's not worth the extra effort
and the trouble of the staining if it's the
same as just a single coat. So my theory on why it
might actually be lighter, because from a
chemical standpoint that doesn't make any sense. But my theory on why it's
a little bit later is because I know that there was some of that yellow
staining in there. I was trying to rinse it longer. And I've noticed that
I think I recently moved and I think the water in our town must have a little bit more
chlorine because I've noticed that if I leave
prints in the water too long, they start to bleach
a little bit. I wonder if the lightening
of this print is just due to getting rinsed
longer in order to try to get rid of some
more of that yellow. All that to say in my
specific situation. This did not improve the
print double coding. Where does that leave us? Am I saying that
double coding is a scam and you should never
really do it, not worth it. Well, no, I can't say that
because I have seen plenty of examples where people got
richer tones or there's, there's a difference between a single quote and
a double quote. So I don't think it
won't work for anyone. But for my specific variables, the paper I'm using, the water, I'm using, all of those things. It doesn't really
improve my prints. And in fact, I'm very
happy with the darkness, the richness of the prints I get just with a regular coat. I do think, however, that while double
coding isn't worth it, I do think for me it'll be worth going through the
extra thought process of saying rather than just
slapping it on quickly and saying it doesn't really matter to actually go through and say, let me coat horizontally,
vertically crisscross. Because again, I tried
this a few times here just to try to get
a controlled result. And I saw this pattern, repeat that where I did that
it was slightly denser. And when you're talking
about photographic prints, having a denser,
a richer print at the end is gonna be
worth the time invested. So for me, that's my takeaway. And again, I'm curious
what results you got. Maybe with the water in your
town or if you're using purified water from
a gallon container or something to
develop your prints. That the double coding
really helped your prints, in which case I'd
love to see them. So where does that leave us? Well, again, this project
was a little different than other classes
because the project wasn't the finished product. The project was the process to figure out what's
going to work for you. And I'm hoping
that through this, you have really learned, you've started to
dial in what is going to work for you in order to
give you the prints you want. Whether it's your coding method, whether it's the development
method using vinegar. I think having these tools
in your tool belt of possible variables to experiment within your cyanotype prints
is going to really help you. Can't do anything but help you because the more
options you have, the more ways you can
fine tune your prints. And as I mentioned before, you are done with this class. Normally I'd be
wrapping up here, but I added an extra bonus video at the end that I really
want you to checkout, which is one more thing
to think about in order to help you dial in some
of these variables more, one more thing that
might be useful to you, so make sure you
stay tuned for that. But as usual, I'm gonna
wrap them my class here. If you make prints, if you follow this process doing one or other of these methods, I really want to see
it makes sure that you share your projects. In this class, I'd
love to see it. I think it would be really beneficial to the
other students. We can give feedback, we can talk about the results, and we can help one another
improve our cyanotype. Thanks so much for
participating. I really had a blast
sharing this with you, and I'll see you
in the next video.
8. Bonus Technique: Hi there and welcome back. This is sort of a bonus of PS video if you well tacked
onto the end because I realized there's one thing
that might help you with this process of really fine tuning your cyanotype
prints a little bit more. One thing that in all
honestly I don't always do, but the fact that I
know I can when I need to is helpful when I'm problem-solving
what I'm trying to get specific cyanotype results. And so what is this great secret that
I'm keeping from you? Well, it's no great
secret really, but It's the idea of taking a test strip and
taking it up a notch. And that's through doing a
tonal map or a tonal scale. So this is gonna be
available in the project. A link. Actually, I got this from alternative
photography website online, so I'm gonna redirect to
that because it's theirs. And what you can do is
download this and make prints of this to dial in
the contrast of your image. So you're gonna print this out. However you normally
print out a negative. So whether you're printing on paper and doing a
paper negative, whether you're
printing on, you know, acetate or transparency and
making that a negative, you want to use the
printer you normally use. You want to use the
paper your normal use and just print it as is. You're gonna expose it like a regular cyanotype using
some of these methods. So you might try the
double coding method with this as the image, or you might try the vinegar development method
with this as the image. And what this is
going to allow you to do this is giving you every little total
step along the way. So there's kind of fine
tuning the 0 to 1010 to 20, the very light side of things. Then there's the 80 up to a 100, the very dark side of things. And seeing how much
of that are you actually able to see in
your finished print. So how did these
actually get used? Well, some people use
these in order to fine tune their negatives. They print these
out. They changed the curves and the computer on when they're printing
out the negative. It's, it's whole
process that is quite advanced can really
make your head spin, but can give you
beautiful results. That's a whole other class
we'll get to another day. How I'm suggesting you
use it is that you make a print using some of these methods that we just
talked about in this class. Whether you're double coding, whether you're using vinegar, combining the two in some way. And this allows you to see
the method you're using. What is it doing to
the actual tonal range that's available
on your negatives. And once you're armed
with that information, it really helps you know what to expect when you're
working with an image. You're looking at an image
that has a lot of dark tones. But you realize the method
you're normally using, everything from 80%
dark to a 100% dark, just goes all the way dark. Well, your image probably
isn't gonna look that good. So you're gonna need to
change the brightness values. You're going to need
to do some things. Or you're working with an image that has more
on the lighter end. And to make sure you see
all those total values, you're going to need
to make sure you have a lower contrast print. So you're going to want
to use more vinegar, which then will change
your exposure, right? It's all linked together. This tool, this tone map, is going to help you
fine tune things. So you might be
saying, well Ben, if it's this important, why didn't you show us
this at the beginning? Because I would've been
using this all along. Well, it's one of
those things that it can add complexity that might
make the process less fun. Sometimes checking down,
making sure you get the perfect contrast
and exposure and all that can
drive you crazy. And the truth is
you're gonna get 80% of the results
just from using the method and doing your best in intuitively without
using this tool. But if you want to
take it, the rest of the way to really be
dialing things in to get the best possible tones exactly the way the negative
was originally taken. Well then you're
gonna have to start using tools like this. So if you're the diverse and that this is
gonna be frustrating, don't use it. There's
no reason to. But if you're the
type of person that really wants to dial things in, well then you're
gonna need to start using a tool like this. And so I recommend you to start experimenting right now using these two methods and seeing the results that are having on the tonality of
your final prints. Hopefully one day
I'll be able to do a whole class on this really in-depth digital
negative making process where you're fine tuning all
the contrast and everything. But for right now, go out
and make awesome prints. Have fun. I'll see you
in the next class.
Ben Panter, Alternative Photography & Game Making
