"Getting up with the Sun"

This morning I was thinking about my sleep patterns and how incredibly bad they have been over the course of my life as a college student. For example, I stayed up until 8am writing a 10 page paper I started at 11pm, while watching my three male roommates play Super Mario on the Wii. I had my ceramics course at 10am that next morning! Even though I was super happy I got that paper done, my following day was shot. This is the way it has been for me throughout my college career. I am typically a "night person." This morning I'm happy to say I got up at 5:36am and it feels good knowing I have the whole day to be productive. It made me think about a film I watched in my American Indian Beliefs course, which is ironically a night course. In the film, a Native American was explaining the importance of getting up with the Sun. If you rise with the Sun, you are able to thank the Sun and your God for another day. The Native American man was sad that his grandchildren were not interested in this tradition anymore. It made me think about my family values, and the appreciation for another day.

Cyanotypes

At Minnesota State University Moorhead, I took an alternative process course with Photography Professor Lana Leishman. We learned many processes; hand-coloring, sabattier, Infrared, pinhole, Van Dyke Brown, and cyanotypes. I fell in love with cyanotypes instantly, and I hope to one day work with this process again. The cyanotype above was taken with a Holga in the North Dakota winter landscape of William A. Guck.

The Cyanotype Process

The cyanotype (Ferro-Prussiate) is often the first process you will encounter in alternative/nonsilver photography. The reason for this is the absolute simplicity of the nearly fail-safe technique and chemistry and the likelihood that you will make a successful print within a short time. Discovered by Sir John Herschel (1792–1871) in 1842, a mere three years after the “official” announcement of the discovery of photography, the cyanotype provided permanent images in an elegant assortment of blue values. Herschel is the same gentleman who coined the words positive and negative, photograph, and snapshot. He is also credited, in 1819, with discovering that a solution of sodium thiosulfate (which he referred to as hyposulfite of soda) had the ability to dissolve silver chloride and what that particular chemical’s role might be in permanently fixing a photographic image. This is an important bit of information that he passed along to Talbot. Curiously, Herschel did not officially announce this particular finding until 1839.

by:Christopher James