Week 101 — Hobby-horsing around

It's been a while between posts! But things have been busy :)I have been getting more and more in to printing with cyanotype. My goal is to be able to print a leaf in enough detail that the internal structure of the leaf comes through in the print! Starting with fresh leaves didn't quite work as expected. I am guessing they're still really good at absorbing UV light, which means not much is left to oxidise the cyanotype emulsion. I did find a couple of interesting leaves that had died and were pretty much dry (drier now after being sat in the sun for several hours 😆). These seemed to work really well! I initially left them out for ~40 minutes and got the faintest of details, but then after seeing this post, I opted for a longer exposure time of ~180 minutes to get the image below. Still needs some refinement, and the avocado leaf is quite torn in the middle and around the edges, so a lot of detail is lost there. I also don't think they are pressed to the paper as much as they can be…