My entry into printing: Cyanotype

Before I understood cyanotype, blue was just a colour. Now, it feels like a memory slowly appearing on paper.

When the photograph still felt unfinished

There came a point in my photographic journey when I realized that making the image was not enough. I was developing my films, scanning them carefully, and spending time understanding the negatives. Yet, even after all of that, it felt incomplete. The photograph still existed behind a screen, distant from the physicality I had begun to seek through analog photography.

That was when I started looking deeper into printing. The more I researched, the more I realized that printing was not just the final stage of photography. It was another way of understanding the image itself. And during that search, I came across cyanotype printing.

Discovering cyanotype

Cyanotype is a 19th-century photographic printing process that creates deep Prussian blue monochrome prints using iron salts and ultraviolet light. Unlike conventional darkroom printing, it carries a rawness and unpredictability that immediately drew me toward it.

The image slowly appears through exposure and washing, almost as if the photograph is emerging from memory rather than being mechanically produced. What fascinated me was not just the final blue image, but the nature of the process itself. It was simple in theory, yet deeply dependent on patience.

Searching for the process beyond the screen

At the time, I searched extensively for places where I could properly learn cyanotype printing in Bengaluru. I watched videos, read articles, and tried to understand the chemistry behind it. Those resources helped me understand the technical process, but I knew I wanted to learn it differently and more so see how it's done physically. I wanted to experience it directly, from people who had spent years understanding the craft, and that desire eventually led me to London and Durham.

Learning in London and Durham

Although I travelled to London to primarily learn platinum-palladium print process, cyanotype remained at the center of my curiosity. I had heard that it could be the simplest form as an entry into the world of alternative print processes, yet capable of producing prints with remarkable depth and character.

During that journey, I attended workshops by Ian Phillips McLaren and Roberto Aguilar. I absorbed everything with complete attention because, by then, I already felt deeply connected to the process.

The moment I understood how light, chemistry, paper, and timing came together, it felt less like learning a technique and more like understanding a language I had been searching for.

Also read - Ian's article, which he wrote about me

Returning home to recreate the print

When I returned to India, the first thing I wanted to do was recreate the prints I had made in the UK. I began working immediately. There was excitement, urgency, and impatience. I coated papers quickly, exposed prints repeatedly, experimented constantly, and waited for the familiar blue to appear, but many of the early attempts did not feel right.

The tones were inconsistent; the contrast felt uneven, the chemistry behaved differently, and the prints lacked the feeling I remembered. At first, I thought I simply needed to perfect the technique. So I worked harder.

Working with paper, chemistry, and light

I experimented with digital negatives and direct negatives under UV light. I tried different papers such as Cass Art, Brustro in the beginning and later experimented with Fabriano Artistico Hot Press and Hahnemühle Photo Rag. I explored how each surface absorbed chemistry differently, how the fibers altered the depth of blue, and how the image responded during washing.

As I moved deeper into the process, I began preparing my own chemistry by mixing equal parts of Potassium Ferricyanide and Ferric Ammonium Citrate solutions. At first, I assumed the process was straightforward. But even with the same chemistry, the results varied repeatedly. It took time before I realized that the variation was not only in the chemicals, but in the way I approached the coating process itself.

I was using a Japanese Hake brush, one of the finest brushes for coating cyanotype chemistry, yet the prints continued to behave differently. Certain coatings absorbed unevenly, certain areas dried inconsistently, and the blues shifted from print to print. Eventually, I understood that the process was not being interrupted by the materials. It was being interrupted by my excitement. I wanted the image to emerge quickly; I wanted the print to resemble the image I already had in my mind, but cyanotype refused to rush itself.

I installed UV lights in my print lab, and to understand the process better, I began working with two different types of exposure lights. I started testing different papers under identical exposure timings, observing how each paper reacted differently despite the exposure remaining the same.

That experiment changed the way I understood printing. The exposure time was no longer just a number; it became deeply connected to the paper, humidity, coating consistency, drying time, and even the surrounding environment.

I began working with a Stouffer step wedge to understand exposure more accurately, carefully observing how each tonal step responded during printing. Slowly, I started recognizing where the print opened up, where the shadows blocked, and where the blue reached its full depth.

I also began using hydrogen peroxide to deepen darker tones and intensify the blues within the print. Later, I experimented with toning selected prints, observing how another layer of chemistry could completely transform the emotional quality of the image.

But more than the chemistry, it was the waiting that stayed with me. The repeated washing, the slow emergence of the image, the time taken for the print to dry and settle into its final form- all of it demanded patience.

There were nights when I sat in the print lab for hours, working through different images, watching the blues slowly evolve under water and air. At times, I would continue until three in the morning, moving from one print to another, observing small variations, trying to understand what each image needed rather than forcing it into a fixed outcome. The process became slow in a way that felt necessary.

And somewhere within those long hours of coating, exposing, washing, waiting, drying, and trying again, cyanotype stopped feeling like a printing technique. It began to feel therapeutic.

When excitement interrupted the process

It took time before I understood why cyanotype was not resisting me. I was resisting its pace.

I had approached the process with excitement, but not with enough stillness. I wanted the image to appear immediately, to settle quickly, to resemble the vision in my mind without allowing the process to unfold naturally. Gradually, I learned to slow down.

Understanding the pace of the print

I began spending more time preparing the paper, understanding humidity, observing exposure changes under sunlight, and allowing the print to dry completely before judging it. I stopped forcing outcomes and started responding to what the print itself was becoming, and in doing so, the process changed me.

Cyanotype taught me that printing is not separate from photography. It is an extension of seeing. The print carries not only the image, but also the time, patience, and decisions behind its making. There is a certain honesty in watching a cyanotype emerge slowly underwater. The image does not appear instantly. It arrives gradually, shifting from pale green to deep blue, settling into itself over time. That transformation stayed with me.

Letting the process shape the image

In many ways, the process began to mirror how I approached photography itself. Not everything needed to happen quickly, not every image needed immediate resolution. Certain photographs deserved time before they revealed what they carried.

The more I worked with cyanotype, the more I realized that the beauty of the process did not lie in achieving perfection. It existed in its variations, in the brush marks left by coating, in the uneven edges and in the way the blues shifted depending on paper, water, light, and time.

Why no two cyanotypes feel the same

No two prints truly felt identical, and perhaps that was the reason I connected with it so deeply. Each print carried traces of the conditions in which it was made. Temperature, humidity, exposure, chemistry, washing, drying — everything left its imprint on the final image.

The process refused repetition, and that unpredictability made every print feel alive.

Printing as a continuation of seeing

Today, cyanotype no longer feels like a process I am trying to master. It feels like an ongoing conversation between image, chemistry, paper, and time- that conversation continues to evolve.

My next exploration is toning of cyanotype prints because I have realized that printing, much like photography itself, is never truly finished. It only continues to deepen with time.

A continuing conversation

The deeper I move into alternative printing, the more I understand that the final image is not only about what was photographed. It is also about how it is brought into the physical world. The waiting, failures, variations and the marks left by process and time- all of it becomes part of the photograph.

And somewhere between the chemistry, the paper, and the blue slowly emerging under water, I found myself slowing down enough to truly stay with the image.