Early this Spring, I spent some time at my son’s elementary school demonstrating Cyanotypes to an entire classroom full of eager kindergarteners.  Both Deanna and I had very active parents in our own schools, so we’ve been doing what we can to be active in Aidan’s classroom.  This was my chance to share my passion with the kids as well as challenge myself by boiling down the photographic process for an attentive audience of five and six year-olds.  Surprisingly, everything went along without a single hitch!

A couple days prior to the demonstration, I started test-coating fabric with Cyanotype solution at home – learning appropriate exposure times, mixture concentrations and the amount of solution needed.  With Aidan assisting me through the process, we test-printed two pillowcases – a prelude to the queen-sized sheet we’d be doing in a couple days.  Although a bit weary, I was determined to wow the kids.

Coating the queen-sized sheet was the hard part; my darkroom is housed in the workspace on the other side of our boiler and, in retrospect, it doesn’t even begin to provide ample space to coat massive sheets of fabric.  I stubbornly kept at it, splattering the walls, cupboards and even the ceiling in excess Cyanotype solution – not to mention ruining a perfectly good set of pants.

The day of the demonstration came and I started off with a quick demonstration of Sunpaper – a pre-coated mass-produced Cyanotype paper that can be purchased at museum gift shops anywhere – and I got all the kids to gather leaves to do their first shadowprints from.  Very excitedly, the kids gathered the leaves, patiently waited for the exposures and marveled as I washed each print carefully.  Now each of them had a memento to take home!

The queen-sized sheet Cyanotype came up next – and I made sure to explain the process thoroughly – that they would all have to lay still for a long time – at least three minutes – for the exposure.  I coordinated with the teacher and her aide how we’d remove the sheet from the black garbage bag, immediately pulling at all corners, laying it down on the ground only to have the kids immediately pounce on top.  We went over the plan again, explained to the kids one last time how important it was to stay still and…. we went for it.

That 3-minute exposure quickly went out the window as the cloud cover forced us to double the exposure to six minutes.  Mind you – three minutes is nearly a lifetime to any kindergartener forced to sit still – and so it was a miracle that nearly the entire lot didn’t move for the required six-minute exposure.  After the exposure was complete, Aidan’s classmates quickly jumped up, ran away and I gathered the entire sheet to douse quickly in water.

The results?  Beautiful.  Perhaps not perfect, but beautiful.  Both kids and teachers were excited to see the end results and everyone marveled at the kids’ ability to stay still for so long.  The final product ended up being the backdrop for Aidan’s class concert just a couple days later.  The experience was artistically invigorating has made me eager to come up with something even more elaborate for his first grade class!

If anything, this is proof positive that it’s never too early to start a love for photography.

Enjoy the pictures!