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An article extracted from the PAGB Newsletter as a follow on from Ann Howarth excellent talk on Cyanotype
JENI HARNEY BA Hons Photography https://jeniharney.co.uk/home https://www.facebook.com/jeniharney/
I started out in camera clubs, then got myself a photography degree. Now I’m back at a camera club where I enjoy the social aspects, but I also want to share my photography. A little context.
The photography I did during my degree is extremely different to club photography. It’s all about context and meaning. A lot of questions get asked, such as why you took the picture and who is it for. It requires time to understand it, looking at the image, reading the artist statement and then looking at it some more so you can see if it resonates with you as a viewer, and whether you can see what the artist was trying to achieve. Club photography is almost the complete opposite. Your picture, especially in competitions, is considered extremely quickly and the viewer doesn’t really have time to think about the image before they move on to the next one. It’s about the immediate visual impact. In competition, it’s also about conforming.. Is it sharp? Is everything in focus? Does it tell a story in that brief few seconds the judge looks at it?
I feel that I have found a balance between these styles of photography and I’m trying to bring some of what I learned during my degree, and my explorations since then, into my club.
I work with film as well as digital photography. I experiment with alternative photographic processes and, as well as making images that fit the formula for competitions, I like to throw a curve ball or three into the mix.
I still have a traditional darkroom and I make prints there and enter them into competition. I make hybrids, say an inkjet print of one of my scanned negatives and I enter my alternative process prints as well. My work is generally well received by the members of clubs I have been at. People are interested in knowing how a cyanotype print is made, and I give demonstrations.
From left to right, a blue tit, robin, great tit and a siskin.
These birds were shot digitally over a couple of weeks. I converted the pictures to mono, inverted them in photoshop, and used an inkjet printer to print them on to transparency film. I then coated my paper with cyanotype solution and made this set of prints.
Cover Image. This is a wet cyanotype of Cosmos. It’s made by coating the paper with a light sensitive cyanotype solution, placing the flowers on it and then adding extra liquids. In this one I used soap suds. I also sprinkled turmeric as well. I sandwiched it between a board and a piece of glass and placed it in the sun for a couple of hours. The heat from the sun, the liquids and the plant material all combine to create the image. I brought inside, rinsed and left it to dry. This one was photographed whilst still wet, as I loved the colours. As it dries, it darkens, and the pale blues turn to Prussian blue. I entered this into a quarterly competition and was extremely shocked that it scored 20 points!
Image 8. I also like to tone my cyanotype prints. This was made the same way as the birds but was bleached in soda crystals and then placed in a tray of very strong, cheap coffee. The tannins in the coffee react with the iron that’s left in the paper and give it an almost sketch-like appearance.
A photograph taken on an iPhone, in Tandle Hills Country Park in Royton. It was printed as a digital negative, then printed in my darkroom as a cyanotype, Once it was washed it was then toned with a strong coffee solution.
Image 4. This is my take on the Pep Ventosa ‘In The Round’ style. I shot this on a super slow film, ISO 1.6! I entered this into a club competition and titled it ‘The Temple at Heaton Park’ as that’s what the building is. The judge gave it a score of 18 but said he would have preferred to have been left wondering what the image was, and that the title took away some of the mystery of the picture.
An image shot using Pep Ventosa's 'In The Round Style, where multiple images are shot whilst walking around an object and layered in Photoshop. Always wanting to be that little bit different though, I shot this on a very slow colour film with a toy camera!
Image 3. I really enjoy printing in the darkroom. When I entered this in our quarterly competition, one of the members commented that they knew it was a darkroom print as soon as they saw it. This print scored 16. The darkroom is becoming much more accessible again. There are community darkrooms where you can pay a small fee and be able to process your films or print your negatives using an enlarger and they all run beginners workshops as well.
Many thanks to the PAGB newsletter for publishing this article.
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