Leslie Plimpton: Instant Gratification

How often do you do something where you are waiting for an outcome and it comes out more interesting than you thought it would be? Or it happens much faster than you think it would have?

Well, I recently took a workshop on cyanotyoe printing and found that both of those things were true of this process. It was so much fun to get the results so quickly and see the results come out in such a wonderful way!

Cyanotype is one of the oldest photographic printing processes, discovered in 1842 by Sir John Herschel. It is a very simple process where you can use a piece of fabric such as linen, cotton or paper, and a combo of two chemicals (ferric ammonium citrate or ferric ammonium oxalate and potassium ferricyanide plus water. ) You soak the material in this combo of chemicals and then can place an item on top of the fabric such as a set of leaves or photo on a transparancy. Then lay it out in the sun for about 15 minutes, then rinse out the fabric and voila! You have an instant print!

So much fun, and yes, instant gratification! You can see some samples of what I created at the workshop when you visit my studio during the Ojai Studio Tour. Come see what instant gratification looks like.