sun | Jerry Slough Photography

Having grown impatient waiting for my chemicals to arrive, I dug out the SunArt paper. Mass manufactured paper made for kids photogram prints. Having worked with cyanotypes in the past this paper is extremely thin, also the coating is blue. Usually the coating is a pale green before being developed in my experience.

So things I noticed from using this paper first of all the exposure times are extremely short as compared to past experience. The best exposures were approximately 2 minutes. I started with 10 minutes and ended up with a completely blue print.

The pictures themselves are extremely flat, i was unable to to get any true whites or any deep blues. This might be a negative problem, but using files that create negatives I have used in the past I would assume it would work.

After that frustration I did a test print with graduated timing, just like you would in the dark room. Eventually I got to around 2 minutes exposure to UV light. Overall I am Excited to move on to my own coated papers in the near future.

I have been working with light for a long time. I have been comfortable working in many situations for a long time. However sometimes I forget how amazing the “Golden Hour” can bee, it seems to make every thing fall into place, my golden hour photos however i did choose to go with black and white, I feel that the lighting speaks volumes in gray scale and also the images i was photographing wer of Joshua Tree National Park which overall color wise is fairly beige and I am of the belief that if color does not add to the image it does not need to be included. The golden hour led to long deep shadows and a beautifully rendered sky. I am enamored with these images and hope every one enjoys them as much as I do.

I have actually learned a few things I had forgotten while shooting these images. The golden hour is truly worth its weight in gold, it actually makes the image stronger to start with, you almost only need to worry about exposure and composition. The long shadows and strong highlights make for very rich images.

Joshua Tree National Park also helps in creating images every time you turn around in the park there is a new image that only needs to be framed and exposed. I actually think this is one of the most scenic parks in the United States and one that is severally over looked because it is a desert, which is truly fine with me, i would actually hate to have this wonderful place as over photographed as Yosemite or the Sequoias. I find Joshua Trees also very photogenic are their own, and are not at all ugly though many seems to think so.