Blue Hands / by ellie berry

Today was my first ever attempt at what I have decided to (possibly) be the most fun part of photography - or at least the most "creative" in the sense of getting your hands dirty and having freedom to experiment with chemicals and dyes. I'm doing alternative processes. 

Starting with what's generally said to be the easiest, I played around with Cyanotypes. My hands are a patchy blue after flicking paintbrushes, and look quite corpse-like.  I love it. 

So here are all my test prints from today! 

Even though the masking tape didn't work quite as well as I intended, I almost like the streaks. Almost. 

The above (I know roses are cliche, but I had the negative from shooting 5x4 last year) were all printed using old negatives. After (below), I just grabbed some leaves from outside and tried to print them.  

Below is a video I found for printing cyanotypes on glass, hopefully will be able to do this next week! Just need to do some shopping. 

For standard cyanotype printing use;

  • 25g of Ammonium Ferric Citrate dissolved in 100ml of water
  • 10g of Potassium Ferricyanide dissolved in 100ml of water
  • Mix the two in a 1:1 ratio
  • Enjoy!