In February 2020, few days before all the world was locked down for a virus, has been registered in Lanzarote the strongest sand (or dust) storm since decades. The local name for that is “calima”, a special weather condition rather fascinating to me, coming directly from the facing African Sahara. I wanted to depict it since a long time, and the time arrived with a huge one. All becomes brown and the sun is barely recognizable, there is a hot diffused light from dazzling to soft, and wind.
I have tested and developed a special linearization system during lockdown, to elaborate the negative so that all the fading shades of the highlights can be there, smooth in the print. A difficult task with Classic Cyanotype formula.
I am happy to offer you this series in a limited edition of 50, made on Arches Platine 310 g, museum quality 100% cotton rag, size is 30×40 cm.
During the summer in Lanzarote I’ve made these unique pieces using the historic process of Classic Cyanotype.
Using leaves I found and the UV light from the sun, I made these double or triple exposures over full sheets of Arches Platine, a pure cotton paper museum grade barbed on the sides. The prints are 56×76 cm, apart one single case.
In the following galleries, for each print the full image is shown first, inside a frame as a suggestion, and then two details are shown immediately after. In the last two galleries you will find prints where it has been done a very light work with pencils to highlight the leaves movement.
Macro Collection, is intended for the interior design of your home.
The ocean beauties of my Macro collection are found on the shores of Lanzarote, often battered by the sea and its volcanic rocks. Small pieces, with a dimension from few millimeters up to few centimeters, are collected and taken into my photographic workshop to regain a new life. I am presenting you all those ocean beauties in the same printed dimension, to give them the chance to be seen, and chosen, by you.
Together with those images I like to present you other sensations from the earth, images from plants, their seeds, berries. Being larger than their life size they connect with the other sea beauties for the same stylistic and photographic approach.
In this work I felt the influence of art master Karl Blossfeldt, even if my style is very different. The use of natural light helped me to preserve every feeling these objects are able to transmit and the formal structure highlighted the details. The use of the prussian blue of cyanotype gives abstraction and poetry at the same time.
My Macro collection of those beautiful treasures is hand printed in Cyanotype, following the 1842 traditional photographic process, on Arches Platine, a very special 100% cotton paper specifically designed and produced in France for alternative photography processes such as platinum (hence the name), palladium, cyanotype. Each photograph is 23×23 cm (9×9″), and is mounted on a simple white support 25×25 cm in Lanzarote markets and posted without it for your free choice of frame and home decoration.
You can find them in the artisan markets where I work in Lanzarote. I post all over the world in a very well protected parcel with registered mail. Please, contact me for further details.
I am happy to offer you the first video course for making Digital Negatives for alternative photography. It is in English with subtitles in English and Spanish.
The making of this video course took more than one and a half years to prepare. My previous experience, making thousands of prints using digital negatives, was indispensable to really understand all the details that I can now explain to you. Before having the idea of making this video course I did a lot of testing to widen my knowledge on the linearization of a digital negative and manage all the variables connected to printing in my process, so that I could have beautiful and consistent results. Working with John Isner was a great help.
I began in 2016 using a cheap all-in-one printer and a basic way to prepare my digital negatives. I was selling many prints and in 2017 I upgraded my system. I bought a full frame camera, an Epson P600 printer, a new self made UV printing unit reaching faster exposure times. I bought a Stouffer step wedge and also prepared an easy-to-use exposure time table for making manual exposure test prints. I built a UV Dose Meter to measure the varying exposure of the sun. I chose Easy Digital Negatives (EDN) system by Peter Mrhar to calibrate my digital negatives so I could concentrate on editing my photos without the need to do all the technical measuring. Inside the course we will be using a few modern tools by EDN, independent from the photo editor of your choice, that are accessible for free on the web.
the calibrated negative with its optimal color blocker (EDN) and the final print in classic cyanotype on Arches Platine
You need to know how to calibrate your digital negative if you print in alternative photographic processes such as Platinotype, Cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown, Kallitype, Salted paper, Chrysotype, Gum bichromate, Argyrotype, Carbon print, etc.
I opened this video course to the members of AlternativePhotography.com before making it open to public. Many people helped me with great feedbacks. I was honoured to receive 5 stars reviews from those knowledgeable testers!
You will find plenty of detailed information, and every lesson has a space for you to post questions that I will answer. Although the value of such a course is high I decided, as it is my personal policy, to offer it at the lowest price possible for me, so that the widest audience could enrol and enjoy it. You have granted unlimited lifetime access to all the course when you buy it! I am sure you already have checked other workshops for making digital negatives (two or three days hands-on) with a price of hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
To know more and discover the Digital Negative video course click HERE. There is an introductory video you can watch for free before buying, describing the important concepts and steps of the course.
It is hosted on Thinkific, a professional platform for video courses that uses secure payment platforms with the most secure protocols such as Stripe for credit cards and PayPal. I hope you’ll enjoy the journey.
Let’s get started! Walk along with me in simple steps.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to measure the color blue?
During your travels or while you wanders taking some fresh air.
Designing your new interior and looking for inspiration.
Sketching in plein-air a new painting.
Connecting your blues to some nice poetry or a piece of music and sharing it with someone else.
I made this Cyanometer, entirely by hand, inspired by the first instrument that Horace Bénédict de Saussure created in 1789 to measure the transparency and colour of the sky. He discovered why the sky changes color. Humboldt used that instrument in his explorations in South America.
Today this poetic and useful tool, printed by hand in Cyanotype on pure cotton paper is for you, to let you measure every day the blueness of the sky, the sea or the soul, with a variety of fifty shades.
From the reviews in my Etsy shop: “The Cyanometer is absolutely beautiful in every way, even the packaging. It sits out to be admired with some of my other special vintage art tools. I include the color number on my notes when sketching landscapes; photos often miss the right color of the sky. It has been “very” helpful when returning to my art space to complete my drawing or painting. If you paint it is truly a treasure tool to have.”
Available for you in my Etsy shop, with or without its own beautiful and simple wooden Stand made out of Sapele redwood and waxed by hand, to be displayed on a bookshelf or a furniture.
To create a community, based on our daily blue(s) more than on our own profiles, I created a Facebook open group called Explorers of the Blue. Please, join and share! Explorers of the Blue
Using the hashtag #explorersoftheblue in Instagram (and Facebook too) we generate a media library that will connect our blue(s). You can look for and follow the hashtag #explorersoftheblue in Instagram to see what’s new there.
If you are a graphic designer or interested in colors, here below there is a pdf document which relates the shades of the Cyanometer to Pantone® solid uncoated codes. Due to the reproduction of the cyanometer, that is printed on off-white cotton paper, and to the more limited range of colors contained into Pantone®, a sort of approximate match has to be expected.Cyanometer-Pantone code matchingDOWNLOAD
Here below you see in a video what you’ll receive at your home :) I hope you can enjoy all you days and make good use of them together with the cyanometer!
I hope you can enjoy all you days and make good use of them together with the cyanometer!
Paolo Saccheri 