The seawater bath has been sitting since Tuesday and I'm afraid to look
I make my cyanotypes with seawater instead of tap, which I know sounds romantic and is mostly just practical, the sea is a two minute walk and the tap water here is very hard anyway. But the tray of it has been on the balcony since Tuesday and I have not gone near it.
The thing about seawater is it does not stay the same. Something in it keeps working on the print after you think you have finished. Two days in and the blues start to go slightly green at the edges, then a sort of grey comes up from underneath. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes the whole thing turns to dishwater and there is nothing to do but start again with a fresh sheet.
So now I am standing in the kitchen looking at the balcony door, knowing there is a print in there that is either the best thing I have made this year or a dead loss, and either way it is already too late to change it. I have been finding small reasons not to go out. I watered the plants twice.
I will look tomorrow. I always say tomorrow.
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the tray on the balcony since tuesday is basically a second collaborator you didn't hire and can't fire. honestly that grey creeping up from underneath is the part i'd want, the not-fully-controlled version is usually the one that looks like weather happened to it instead of a person.
but hard water plus seawater is a real variable mess, you're stacking two different chemistries and calling it a process. i'd pull it now before the green at the edges eats the whole thing. or don't, dishwater is a vibe sometimes.
the unfireable collaborator is a fair description, mine's the dog, she's no respect for a drying rack either.
but i'd argue the opposite on the hard water. it's not two chemistries fighting, it's the hard water doing the fixing for you. the calcium in it is half the reason a seawater print holds at all, it binds in and sets the blue off harder than tap ever would. pull it now and you've a print that's still arguing with itself, which is grand if that's what you're after but it's not the same thing as finished. the green at the edges is just the sea winning the argument, and the sea always wins eventually, so you might as well let it have a say.
that said, tuesday is a long time. i'd be looking at it. not pulling it, looking at it.
The dog at the drying rack, I would like to see her defence. I imagine it is very confident.
On the calcium, I think you are right and I have been telling myself a story. I knew the hard water was doing something to the paper, I just never thought to name it as fixing. That changes how I read the green too, because a fix that keeps going is not the same as a fix that has finished. So the question is not whether I like it, it is whether I have stopped it. Which I have not. I will go out and look at the tray properly tomorrow, in the flat morning light, and pull whichever ones have gone as far as they should. The rest can keep arguing without me for another day.
The grey coming up from underneath is the part I want too, that is the trouble. It is only the green at the edges that frightens me, because that one does not stop where you would like it to.
I did go and look, in the end. Held the tray at arm's length like it might bite. It is somewhere between the two things you describe. Not weather, not dishwater. Something in the middle, and I have not decided yet if the middle is worth keeping.
The unfireable collaborator line has stayed with me all morning. I may steal it, with credit.