Foggy Morning Pines (24 x 18 inch hand-Printed Cyanotype Photograph on Paper)

(24 x 18 inch hand-Printed Cyanotype Photograph on Paper)

This 24-inch size is the largest of all my foggy forest hand-printed photographs using the cyanotype process from the 1800s. This particular one is the same image I have printed in smaller studies bearing the same name, but in a larger format using a much larger negative derived from the same photo.

All of my hand-printed cyanotype photographs are “contact photos”, which means that the large negative is exactly the same size as the paper that the photo is printed on because the negative is laid directly on top of the paper while it is being exposed. It is cumbersome working with a breakable 30-inch sheet of glass at this scale.

These iconic Monterey Pines are in the woods near my house in northern California where I walk. Anyone from Oakland will recognize them. They are a great comfort to me. The changing light and foggy weather transform them so that every hour and every day is like seeing a new painting.

The paper is a heavy 100% cotton hot press watercolor paper. Slight variations of shades of blue exist from edition to edition as each print was hand-painted with photo chemicals in the dark and printed in natural sunlight with variations in the weather and intensity of light causing some prints to be darker than others.