While I’m waiting for my sensitized fabric to dry I decided to try my scanner on the film setting. Digging around in my boxes the other day, I found old medium format negatives of Death Valley. It’s always fun to look at old negatives. It helps me look at how I’m shooting now. This photo of an eroded hill was made in Death Valley 8 years ago. I used a Mamiya TLR, Ilford SFX, and developed in Pyro-PMK. My negs were pretty thick back then with all that stain…

Today I revisited “wheel” on fabric to work out the contrast issues I had with the last print. What I was going for today was a print with a smoother tonal scale, and more detail in the area around the wheel. I prepared panels this morning by removing the sizing from the fabric. I did this over the stove and let the panels simmer for 15 minutes in hot water spiked with a chemical desizing agent. I used a product called “synthrapol”, purchased at my local fabric store. After rinsing, I hung the panels in the sun to dry for a few hours. Later in the day I prepared the sensitizer diluted 1:1 and poured the solution into a large pyrex dish. One by one, I immersed the panels into the solution and then hung them in the darkroom to dry. I ran several tests and the one that worked the best today is shown below. The image was exposed for 3 minutes-38 seconds and was developed in running water. I’m allowing this print to dry down overnight before any more chemical processing such as toning. This will allow the print to oxidize a bit giving me a better idea of its true tonal range. Test print shown below plus a closeup of the right corner to show the texture of the fabric. Sorry about the white lint above the bumper…

Photo #1: “wheel, death valley” printed on 200-count cotton sateen sensitized with the new cyanotype formula. diluted 1:1, exposed for 3min 38sec, developed in H2O.

Detail of the right upper corner of the print. The fabric is pretty cool…