From: garimo (omirag@cruzio.com)
Date: 11/14/01-06:41:30 PM Z
My take 'em or leave 'em suggestions would be:
1, get a copy of the 'ol standard Alt handbook by Bea Nettles which has
reliable formulas and instructions. Titled, BREAKING THE RULES - A
Photo Media Cookbook
2, learn to mix your own cyanotype chemistry (requires a scale) coat
your own papers and save money by not buying the same stuff that
someone else put on a scale and added to some water. Also by mixing
your own cyanotype chemistry, you'll get much better results than
buying precoated papers like the sun paper that is sold online by
Freestyle (photo supply store in S. Ca.) and maybe toy stores because
the color (results) of the sun paper is very light compared to freshly
coated papers... (But the kids will never know the difference which
ever way you go...) You can always pre-coat the paper for the kids if
they are quite young and store it a couple of days in lightproof
plastic bags untill use if you want the blue to have a darker color.
3, In addition to photograms (which are great!! I just did some some
large Van Dyke Brown Photograms of these huge lush ferns I picked in
the woods, and only fixed in one bath of fixer for around 1 min. maybe
a little longer) you can have the kids do things like make drawings,
pasted cutout collages, paintings,whatever... and have a place like
Kinko's (Mail Boxes Etc. does a better job) make copies of the art work
on what they call a "Reverse Transparency". It's the same as a
negative. It won't be the quality of a first class film negative. But
it will make a image on cyanotype which will likely have some streaks
from the copy machine.
Also you can make images just from drawings on light weight papers (or
oiled papers).
The book Breaking The Rules, has instructions for making printing media
from Pinholes/ortho films/xerography/magazine rubbings and lifts and
more plus instruction on how to coat papers.
have fun
garimo
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