Cyanotype Inspired Wedding Ideas

Photography fans, you’re sure to love this inspiration shoot from the dynamic team of Lisa Blume Photography, Cheers Darling Events, On a Limb Floral Design. It’s directly inspired by Cyanotype (a photo printing process that produces a blue print), which paved the way for tons of bold blue elements — just wait ’til you see the bride’s striking skirt in outfit #2! Savannah, Georgia was the perfect location for it all, with cobblestone, tree-lined streets and sidewalks with herringbone pavers to top everything off.

From the photographer, Lisa Blume: While planning my own wedding, I had the idea of using the alternative photography process Cyanotype as inspiration but realized my chosen wedding dress would not match the Cyanotype look. I was so excited to find out that Bevin and Sio were thrilled with the idea of using Cyanotype for our inspiration! Once we nailed down the overall style and look, we brought on Kaitlin of Cheers Darling Events, who was thrilled to come down to Savannah for this fun project! From there the shoot took off like a shooting star and we are so thrilled with the results. Kaitlin pulled together the most amazing creative team and we really couldn’t be more happy with the results.

I’m so lucky to have been in the same photography graduate program at Savannah College of Art & Design with the editors and creators of Paprika Southern, Bevin Valentine Jalbert and Siobhan Egan. Paprika Southern is the magazine for art and style in the South. Published quarterly, Paprika Southern’s content includes interviews with and profiles of artists, entrepreneurs and tastemakers living and working in the South, as well as fashion and lifestyle features and creative non-fiction. Learn more on our about page. We thought that we could use this photoshoot as an educational moment to teach our vendors, our friends, and the Paprika Southern readership about what a Cyanotype is!

Here’s a little background on the process which might be information we could use for the text and story: The book In the Darkroom: An Illustrated Guide to Photographic Processes before the Digital Age states: The discovered only a few years after the announcement of a daguerrotype, paper negative, and salted paper print, the cyanotype was introduced in 1842. It was used in the earliest decades of photography to make camera-less photographs, notably of botanical specimens. Because it is one of the simplest and easiest photographic printing processes to master, the cyanotype increased in use around the turn of the nineteenth century among amateur snapshooters. It also found widespread use in architecture and engineering firms as a means of copying drawings and plans, called bluprints, in which the drawing appears in white on a blue ground. Cyantype paper was commercially produced from 1872.

Cyanotypes are based on the light sensitivity of iron salts rather than silver salts. The Cyanotype is a one-layer photographic structure: the image is embedded in the fibers of the support and thus produces a print with a matte surface. To make a cyanotype, the photographer coasted paper with a mixture of potassium ferrocyanide and ferric ammonium citrate and hung it dry. It was the nexposed to light in contact with a negative or with an object or drawing laid on top of it. After exposure , the print was washed in water to remove the unexposed chemicals. The resultant chemical mixture created ferric ferrocyanide, also called prussian blue; as the print dries, it turns bright blue. When toned with different solutions, the cyanotype’s color could be changed to gray, reddish brown, black, violet, or green tones. Cyanotypes have a high level of image stability but can fade from exposure to light. However, they can regain some of their image density when stored in the dark.