There are subjects that do not fit very well with this scanning thing. Typically anything with white won’t cut out properly on the white background. Using a black background could be an option, but this would not work with the rest of the material.
What works (to my taste of course)
What doesn’t work so well:
This project of putting plants directly on the glass of the scanner and then print a negative in order to make a cyanotype print is really pushing me forward. It is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for in order to explore more and more textures. This workflow allows me to get the maximum out of the raw material. I’m sure some might say this is a bit too much, but I’m clearly not looking for a representation of the real here. I’m looking to get over this in order to give simple leaves another dimension.
Some misc print that I’m doing on the journey of experimenting wit cyanotype. I’ve been using this technique for 7 years now, but there is still a lot to learn. Practice is the key as usual.
You can really manipulate the image in post when using digital negatives. This is an example of two prints made with really different post processing on the original file.
During Falls, actually this apply to all season, my daughter picks some leaves or different kind of artefacts from nature. They are then forgotten everywhere in the house. You could just through it back to the yard, but what if this could be used to make something pictural. So here it goes to the scanner, got some processing, and printed as a negative to make a cyanotype. I’m quite pleased how it turns. Now I’m the one picking stuff outside.
One thing that I wanted to experiment was to create a correction curve for digital negatives. Note, this is not a tutorial, there are many out there. There’s a straight forward way with ChartThrob if you have photoshop. With Gimp, you have to do it manually. So I created a grey chart from 0 to 100% white. Then inverted to negative and printed it. I make a cyanotype print. Once it is dry, I scanned it and convert it to grey with minimal change (desaturate). With that file, I measured the average grey for some of the squares. Actually it turns out that I didn’t get an even light on the width of the paper. Decided to just used the vertical line with the values 0, 10, 20, …., 100. That makes 11 point for the curve. Then a bit a calculation in excel, and we get the data for our curve. Save it and then reuse on another picture.
Here are some results, the same negative with the curve applied, on two different papers.
The Hahnemühle Sumi E. This is giving a lot of mid tones
My regular Canson bristol like. With this paper we have bit more highlights. Maybe it worth to expose a bit longer.
And here is the scanned chart. Here we can see the problem that the left column his actually more dense than the right column. This is something I need to fix at some point in order to get more values usable. But a 11 point curve is already a good start. I’ll make a curve with only the left column (10 points) and compare.
Continuing on this journey of letting various plants & flowers drying around, then scan them directly and making a cyanotype print from a digital negative. I have not yet decided if I’ll tone that one or not. Maybe make another one and keep the blue one. Next step in the project is to find a way to bind them and make a small book from the original prints.
As I was developing a few 8×10 which were waiting for a while the other day, I found this one which I haven’t yet printed. Again coffee toned.
Here we go, since we are locked down again and all activities with the photo club are on hold, I got my hands on a printer in order to play with digital negatives. Usually I only use large format negatives but some of the ideas I have lately are really not handy to be executed that way. There was some flowers drying on my desk for a while, decided to scan them, play a bit with the file, and printed a digital negative. Then standard cyanotype print followed by a light coffee toning. This is clearly changing the pace of getting a print ready. I can go from idea to realization within the same day, and don’t loose the focus as I’m not doing this full time, but only have 1 to 2 hours once every two days to enjoy this.
I had this cyanotype print which didn’t have enough details, the head of the subject did not pop out from the background. So I tried to apply what was experienced before. So I used Carbonate potassium to get more light to the picture, and then toned with coffee. I end up with a less contrasty image which I think is a fit for this kind of picture. The two pictures below are scans of the same sheet of paper and both raw from the scanner.
