Cyanotypes
Who was Anna Atkins?
Anna Atkins was an english botanist and photographer.She is often considered to be the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. She was also said to be the first woman to take a photograph. Anna Atkins was born in Tonbridge,kent, in 1799. Her mother,Hester Ann, died in 1800 because she "didn't recover from the effects of childbirth". Anna was really close to her father, John George, who was a scientist.She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825. Anna's book was called " British Algae: cyanotypes impressions" and it was said to be the first book with illustrated photographic images. As well as this, Anna decided to use to cyanotypes process further by printing her hand written text and illustration through the means of this photographic process rather then using traditional letter pressing. |
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advantages of cyanotypes The advantages of using cyanotypes is that it is very cheap and easy to use. You can put many different things on it such as plants,scissors,discs,ect... You also dont need a darkroom to use it or any kind of complicated equipment. This is probably why people such as artists still us Some examples of cyanotypes In this slideshow you can see some examples of different types of cyanotypes. You don't have to just use plants you can use many different things such as films or even feathers. It has been seen that even humnas get used to make a cyanotype. |
my cyanotypes
cyanotype 1
I don't think that my first attempt was incredible because you can't see the shapes very clearly and everything is just a bit blurry. I first started my using quite light objects because i thought it might make it look quite nice and lightly coloured but because my light bulb didn't stay still so i had to put heavier objects on it and it to me it kind of ruined it. |
cyanotype 2
I am much prouder of the second attempt because I used a range of heavy and light objects and I think that the cyanotype looks much cleaner however I would have liked it if I had put a couple of more objects on it because it would have looked a as I would say "artsy" looking. |