Cyanotyping at the Indiana Dunes

Fourth of July was a beautiful day and since we had leftover cyanotype paper from Art/Watch we decided to try cyanotyping at the beach!  I had heard about people cyanotyping in the ocean and wondered what it would be like since I normally try to maintain a lot of control when cyanotyping, and working on the beach would pretty much epitomize a lack of control. 

The Indiana dunes

Bank Swallows flying in and out of their nests

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Lake Michigan

Not quite the ocean, but it does look like it!

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Instead of trying to use my usual materials, we collected things from the beach-- feathers, stones, bits of dried plants, and also garbage...  Cigarette butts, plastic, food wrappers, beer bottle caps.  I only made one print with the garbage.  It was depressing enough to find everywhere, I didn't want too many reminders of it.

I brought a small piece of plexi with me that was useful for keeping the feathers and lighter plants from blowing away, but it significantly increased the required exposure time.

Laying them face down like this on a sheet to dry wasn't the greatest option, but it worked all right. Do not use anything you'd like to keep clean, since the cyanotype comes off while drying and leaves a nice blue stain!

All of the beach cyanotypes came out looking very ethereal, even the one made of garbage! (not shown)

My husband checking out the cyanotypes

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Overall it was a lot of fun, and there were some nice surprises (for instance, sand blocks light beautifully!).  It was hard to tell, though, when the prints were washed out well enough and it was very easy to overexpose with these delicate materials and lose the high contrast (and, alternatively, it was easy to end up with a big white underexposed blob).  Choose your materials and space them carefully!

Packing up the prints. They were still a little wet but didn't smudge each other like I feared.

Leave only footprints (in this case, seagull footprints!)