This may not look much to you, it's fairly small, life-size, though not miniature enough to be astounding; the image within the frame being almost nearly, though not quite, square, at 19cm high and 18cm wide.
It's a cyanotype collage and here's how I made it;
I picked the Lavender, Rosemary, Oregano and Viola from my garden and pressed them between some absorbent paper under some heavy books for a week or so. The Oak leaf I had found under a pile of other Oak leaves at the end of the winter in 2020.
I mixed the cyanotype chemicals and prepared some papers in semi darkness. I have a safe red light and some of the lights in our kitchen are LEDs which apparently don't ruin the process, unlike halogen light emitted by incandescent bulbs, so, in this dim light, I painted the papers and allowed them to dry, giving them another coat then storing them in light safe bags when they were thoroughly dry.
This takes a couple of hours and any curious cats must be kept out of the way during the process; especially hard with black ones who tend to slip in unnoticed, particularly if the light is dim.
I've had a certain amount of success in the past with cyanotypes by leaving them in the sun outside or on a window ledge inside. It's a little unpredictable in the Pennines because the sky is usually cloudy and those clouds generally like to offload their rain on us around here as they pass, but that's an element of chance I really enjoy.
However, if I tell you that our secret name for where we live is Windy Ridge and that it goes nice and dark around here at about 4 to 4.30 in the depths of Winter, plus the fact that I was given a wonderful UV lamp especially for this process, you might be able to guess why, on this occasion, I decided to use that rather than natural light.
I really love the cyanotype process. It encompasses all the elements of the creative process which appeal to me; an element of craft and skill, with a large input of chance. Like all photography, the whole process cannot be controlled entirely and this always provides me with a frisson of excitement and a feeling that magic is involved.
I replaced the original herbs and flowers nearby their cyanotype ' shadows ' and privately titled it ' you dancin' '.
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