Cyanotype

For those of you who follow my photography page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sbshutterbug for those of you who don't), this may seem redundant. Today's post is on the printing process called cyanotype. Like sepia, cyanotype was invented for film prints developed in the darkroom. You use lots of extra smelly chemicals to turn your photograph into a light blue (cyan) print. Generally the chemical is painted on with a paintbrush, so brushstrokes are visible along the edges and in places that were missed. Now I wish I had a darkroom and my own smelly chemicals to create a real cyanotype, but I have not the money for such things. Instead, I downloaded a free app onto my iPod and used its cyanotype effect on some of my digital photos. I find it works best on portraits.