Cyanotype

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. It is one of the first form of photography favoured by Anna Atkins. Blue is my favourite colour and I like the experimental side of using found objects or past drawing and using them as a negative and then create a physical print with a sun exposure. It means I need to collect during my walks, build a little scene on paper and observe the weather to work out the exposure time and maybe the impossibility of doing a print in that day. The unexpected side of it is exciting but with more experience I hope soon to be able as well to control the light and produce large images.

I am still a bit perplexed on the following points: i used watercolour paper but it curls when coated and I now found out after speaking to Jacquard that I should use printmaking paper. yesterday I used Strathmore printmaking during a workshop and it reacts differently.

Secondly my brush leaves stripes and that may come more evident with the new cyan formula so from now on I will use a sponge. I tried on Wednesday and it worked well.

I expose outdoor, not with UV light so timing is changing and I may need to do s stripe test to figure out the exposure for my paper , let’s s say for a sunny day.

Must handle the paper with immaculate hand!

Beware of shadows cast by building when the sun turns.

There is something as overexposure that can solarize my prints so not forgetting the print in the garden for too long may help the process.

If I use a digital negative, I need to carefully check highlights and shadows.

When I can handle all that easily my next step will be trying toning. I already used tea but not long enough so it didn’t mark enough the paper. Maybe because it was Roibos.

I did a workshop yesterday at Hampstead School of art with the great Emma Pegg. It was quite experimental and I had lots of fun.

I

Lensculture portfolio account

I am very honoured to have been invited for a portfolio account at Lensculture! This is platform I really admire and look at regularly so I am looking forward to share my projects there.

About LensCulture
Perhaps you are already familiar with LensCulture. For the past 10 years, we have been focused on building the most vibrant community for contemporary photography. The Guardian praised LensCulture as “One of the most authoritative and wide-ranging sites.” Today, our global audience has grown to over one million across our website and social media. Many influential enthusiasts in the global photography marketplace including editors, curators, gallery owners, publishers, and festival directors all use LensCulture as a resource for discovering the best in contemporary photography.

I went to Photo London and had the chance to hear the conversation between these 2 artists:
Adam Fuss is a camera less photographer and Antony Gormley a sculptor and are interested in each other works.

Adam Fuss

www.antonygormley.com

The artists raised a few points that I found very interesting:

Continue reading

Film black and white

I am  attracted to colours and their brightness and I fully enjoy it when I paint too. I actually used it to in my series “keep out:organism “.
At the same time, I saw recently 2 exhibitions in which the artist used film :

-Elton John’s collection at the Tate modern

– Dana LIxenberg at  Deutshe Borse photographic foundation prize at the Photographers Gallery.  Thanks Tilly and Verity for this for coming with me or suggesting it!.
When I see the Black and white images on the wall, I feel an immediate attraction to the print that I want to touch like a painting. Dana Lixenberg’s were huge so that effect was even bigger. I decided to use more my film camera and go back to the darkroom.

Too many of my photos never came of of my computer but I still have on my wall a curious Parisian scene I took 25 years ago on the shores of the River Seine.

 

i would like now to work in parallel of my colourful series shoot digitally and used the darkroom to work on minimalist pieces from the natural world. It may be interesting to see how each work feed the other.

Paris Photo

Last week Paris Photo  took place at the Grand Palais in Paris.
I usually go for portraits but this time I was attracted to some special images without a human inside.
– Christan Patterson at the Robert Morat Gallerie put a telephone next to the photos and after calling the names featuring in the notebook, it was possible to hear the sounds corresponding to the landscape.

Continue reading

Walk 2: Dalston to Shoreditch

Yesterday I went East again (walk 1 to come soon). During my wandering around, I came across : the Arcola Theatre,  a specialist Japanese cycle shop ( I felt like buying one, maybe next time ), the Eastern Curve Garden but it was closed, then a lovely new place:Velvet Marie , There are delicious coffee and cakes there. Then I asked Marie and Kirsty (playful accessories) suggestions on where to go next. (rule is i don’t prepare where I will go, just land in a train station and improvise from there)

image

Continue reading

Selfie or Self-Portrait?

You are standing in a beautiful spot and who can resist grabbing the phone and taking a selfie? Apparently millions are uploaded everyday. Wikipedia says “A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. Selfies are often shared on social networking services such as FacebookInstagram, or Twitter. They are usually flattering and made to appear casual. Most selfies are taken with a camera held at arm’s length or pointed at a mirror, rather than by using a self-timer.”

Continue reading