Cyanotype in motion!

I’ve mentioned before in my posts that I’m a signed up member of the Alternative Processes Academy, a wonderful online resource for learning and creating artwork with alternative photographic printing processes. As well as having a growing bank of modules covering many different processes including cyanotype, lumen, anthotype and chlorophyll printing to name but a few, there are also guest lectures available online from leading art and photography practitioners. One such lecture I joined recently was given by internationally acclaimed artist Edd Carr, who is also a co-founder of The Sustainable Darkroom, who describe themselves as “an artist-led, research community that develops low-toxicity chemistries and practices in photography”.

The topic of the lecture given by Edd was “how to create cyanotype animation”, which immediately grabbed my attention – I had absolutely no idea how to animate cyanotype prints, so I just had to see what it was all about! The lecture was pitched in a very accessible way and I soon grasped the fact that the animation was (simply?) made of exported frames from a video sequence – each of which were then converted/printed out as negatives onto clear acetate film, before exposing them to make cyanotype prints in the traditional way. Edd, who exhibits internationally and has made videos for an impressive portfolio of leading brands, showed examples of his own work. Given that some of the video sequences he has made are several minutes long and involved the making of thousands of individual cyanotype prints, I could see that I’d definitely have a challenge on my hands if I wanted to have a go myself. But of course, there seems to be a punitive part of my personality that leads to self-inflicted challenges. I’ve long been fascinated by animation and the thought of making my own, using cyanotype prints was an exciting, if rather daunting prospect…

I decided to use a short clip I’d recorded on my phone a while back, of a group of pigeons in my local high street who were feeding voraciously on some grain that someone had tossed down – apparently ignoring the “Please Do Not Feed The Pigeons” signs which are displayed along the street in various shop windows. Despite the clip being only around 8 seconds long, I knew from watching the lecture, that to translate even a clip of this length into a cyanotype animation would require hundreds of frames – and therefore hundreds of cyanotype prints would have to be made. So I edited the clip drastically by trimming it to just 2 seconds of footage. I decided that the resulting 2 second animation would work as a continuous loop, hopefully compensating for it being so short. The file size was small enough to email from my phone, so I sent it to my laptop – and using a piece of freeware recommended by Edd in his lecture called Adapter, I selected a frame speed of 12fps (frames per second), which converted the clip into a reasonably manageable set of 30 jpeg images (frames) using the “highest quality” setting. I then opened up the images in Photoshop and inverted each one to make a negative image, which I then printed in black and white onto transparent film using my Canon inkjet printer. Because I only wanted the animation to share on my social media via my mobile phone, the images didn’t need to be a large format, and I was able to fit two negatives onto an A4 sheet of transparent film. In making this animation, it was vital that the exported frames from the original clip were kept in the correct order right throughout the process. To get around this, I numbered each negative as per the example below.

Once I’d printed the negatives, it was time for the fun, handmade part – actually creating the cyanotype prints I needed to make the animation with. Even for this tiny, 2 second-long animation, I would need to make 30 individual prints – which I knew would be time-consuming and use up a lot of paper – but by this time, I’d well and truly got the bit between my teeth and there was no going back! The thought did cross my mind that I would be spending considerable time and resources on what amounted to an unpaid personal project, resulting in 30 unsaleable cyanotype prints of pigeons feeding on grain – oh well! By way of justification, I reminded myself that I was only using just 2 sheets of my lovely, expensive 300gsm Fabriano paper, cut up into 30 small sheets measuring 18cm x 11cm – nothing to feel too guilty about??

Once I’d cut the paper to size, I numbered each sheet 1-30 on the back and then set about coating them with light sensitive cyanotype emulsion in the usual way (I use the one by Jacquard Products), before laying them out to dry thoroughly in a dark drawer. Meanwhile, I trimmed the negatives to size, making sure I retained the number on the film below each one. When exposing each negative, it was imperative that I used the coated sheet of paper which had the corresponding number on the back – so I had to keep my wits about me – the reason for the importance of keeping the images in the correct order will become apparent when I explain the rest of the process…

…So I now had quite a lot of exposing/printing to do. In order to try to ensure consistency of exposure times, I opted to use my UV light exposure box for this part. Alternatively, I could have exposed multiple prints together outside in my garden, laid out on a large board and pressed down with a sheet of toughened glass the same size, to ensure that each negative had full contact with the sheet of paper it was to be printed on. As it turned out, I’d probably do it the latter way if I ever repeated this project – the UK weather has been unusually sunny lately and I do feel the outside rays result in the most beautiful deep blue. Interestingly, my “consistency of exposure time” using the light box didn’t quite yield completely consistent results across all the prints – possibly due to inconsistency in the way I coated the paper – don’t you just love the unpredictability of cyanotype??

So…onto the final leg of what turned out to be a rather epic personal project… I had a pile of 30 cyanotype prints, numbered 1-30 on the back – each one would make up a single frame of my animation. The prints now had to be scanned and saved as jpegs (yes, back to sitting at a computer…) and then imported, in the correct numerical order, back into the Adapter software. If I had somehow muddled up the order of the frames, I knew that the animation wouldn’t work, so I hoped my attempt at having an organised numbering system had worked and kept my fingers crossed. Once imported, I selected “video” as the output option and 12fps (frames per second) as the playback speed for my animation and then hit “convert”. This was the moment of truth and I was weirdly nervous – after all, did it really matter if it didn’t work out as I envisaged? No-one had commissioned me to make this animation – I was doing it purely for myself.

As it turned out, I actually loved the result – the quirkily jumping frames really suited the engaging and comical industriousness of the feeding pigeons. I replayed the animation far too many times and felt justified in allowing myself to be distracted into making such a self-indulgent project, when I had so many far more important things I needed to do! I also thought, not for the first time, how glad I was that I had signed up for the Alternative Processes Academy – arguably one of the best creative decisions I’ve made in recent years. If you fancy checking it out for yourself, you can find out more by clicking this link.

…And if you’d like to take a look at the finished animation I made, you can view it here on my Instagram page – I’d love to know what you think and if you decide to give it a go, I’d also love to hear about your own explorations into this fascinating, but incredibly labour-intensive process!