Passing ships - Cyanotype print

Passing ships (cyanotype print) ~ Philli Overton

Two ships passing off Caloundra, captured on camera and printed as a Cyanotype print on sensitized filament paper. This was another example of alternative printing experimentation submitted as part of my Visual Arts certificate through TAFE Queensland.

Passing ships (photograph) ~ Philli Overton

• Camera: Olympus E-M10MarkIV
• Aperture: f/18
• Exposure: 1/2000 second
• Focal lens: 138 mm
• ISO-auto

The image was taken under midday lighting conditions using a camera and tripod set-up on the rocky headlands off Shelly Beach at Caloundra. A fast shutter speed and aperture of f/18 was used to capture the splash of water frozen in midair. As I had only a brief moment in time to capture the smaller ship passing in front of the larger ship, the ISO was set to auto. In actual fact, the large ship in the background was actually a few kilometres off the coast as it straightened to enter the Pumicestone Passage and begin its final approach to the Port of Brisbane. This was a good example of using forced perspective in a photo.

The image was inverted in Adobe Photoshop and printed onto clear negative film...

... which was then developed on sensitized paper under UV lighting.

The image was developed under UV lighting for 16 minutes, washed under running water for 3 minutes and then placed into a tray of peroxide solution for 9 seconds to bring out the vibrance of the blue. After a final wash in a tray of water for 5 minutes, the print was left to dry and then pressed flat with a hot iron. As you can see, the untrimmed image best highlights this alternate printing method and resulted in a cool blue denim image that was exhibited as part of the 2024 TAFE Queensland Mid-Year Exhibition at the South Bank campus in Brisbane.

Philli O.