Cyanotype on Glass - 02

More Success

I eventually got my delivery of fresh gelatin from Nik & Trick Photographic. Not that they were slow in sending, but we were cut off by storms for a few days last week, and then again this weekend. Part of life here..!

I made up a small batch of sensitiser to test. Re cleaned the one piece of glass I have for this purpose. Melted some of the solution after letting it ripen for just over 24 hours. Coated the glass quite badly, made an exposure, but it was pretty bad with the poor coating technique. Started again, cleaned glass, re-coated with the sensitiser just a little thicker/cooler before coating. Much better coating this time, not perfect - that will take practice, but better. Left the plate to dry overnight properly in the darkroom and made another exposure.

The image is better than I thought, it's now recorded and the glass is cleaned once again ready for another practice at coating tomorrow. This is the way it will be until I can achieve some consistency in practice.

In a couple of weeks a friend is picking me up approx 35x 7"x 5" cut glass plates when he travels south briefly. Once he returns I will have plenty of plates to start coating a few at a time and to make the process of producing images a little more efficient. Currently it can take up to 48 hours from cleaning the glass plate through coating and drying, exposing the plate, washing and then once again letting the image/plate dry and darken.