Alternative Photography - Experimental Cyanotypes
Uncover how sunlight, plant matter, and eco-chemistry converge to create glowing, camera-less images. In this hands-on workshop, artist Simone Darcy guides you through the expressive world of Phytograms and Anthotypes, two of photography’s most poetic, environmentally conscious image-making processes.
Using leaves, flowers, fruit, and other natural materials, you’ll explore how direct contact, pressure, moisture, and sunlight interact with light-sensitive surfaces to generate richly textured, organic images. This workshop celebrates slowness, experimentation, and the magic that happens when nature collaborates with photographic chemistry.
You’ll also dive into cyanotype and toning techniques, expanding your creative toolkit through colour shifts, layering and texture. Working with hand-coated papers and sunlight, you’ll transform natural materials and everyday objects into vibrant Prussian Blue artworks while learning how toning solutions can shift these blues into browns, greens, greys or warm organic hues, giving each print its own atmospheric personality.
Simone will introduce the art-historical roots of these processes, along with contemporary artistic applications, ensuring you leave with both a technical foundation and an expressive body of work. Across the session, you’ll create a series of 4–6 unique pieces on high-quality 300gsm paper, experiencing the unforgettable moment when pale exposed sheets deepen into rich colour under running water.
Perfect for beginners or anyone craving a hands-on creative practice, this workshop blends eco-art, analogue photography and contemporary abstraction in an accessible, inspiring way.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this cyanotype course, you should be able to:
- Hand-coat papers with cyanotype chemistry
- Expose and develop prints using sunlight
- Create expressive compositions using natural and found materials
- Apply toning methods to alter colour and mood
- Produce a cohesive set of 4–6 finished cyanotype artworks
Course content
- History and contemporary relevance of cyanotype
- Hand-coating and preparing papers
- Outdoor exposure and development
- Negative images, objects, and botanical forms
- Toning solutions for colour variation
- Experimental mark-making and layering
All materials are included
- Open to all skill levels, no prior photography experience is needed.
<p>Uncover how sunlight, plant matter, and eco-chemistry converge to create glowing, camera-less images. In this hands-on workshop, artist Simone Darcy guides you through the expressive world of
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