About Us
Artist, Erin Smith & Origin Artistry
I have had a love affair with photography all my life! My uncle gave me my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, and a National Geographic coffee table book for my 7th birthday in the early 1980s. Some may have thought these were odd gifts for a little girl, but I was hooked from the first moment I screwed on the flash bulb and loaded the 110 film. In high school, I documented the antics of my friends and family vacations with disc camera. At the University of Colorado at Boulder in the 1990s, a darkroom photography class introduced to me various processing techniques and led to a small side business shooting preschool portraits with my dad's old Canon AE-1, my first SLR. In the early 2000s I made the switch from film to digital and focused on international travel photography while living in China and exploring Asia for 2 years. After becoming a mom in 2005, creative photography took a backseat to iPhone snaps of my kids, husband and dog, but my curiosity and passion for photography never wavered.
In 2020, while the world was on lockdown due to the corona virus pandemic, we were not allowed to leave our houses. As I was cleaning out boxes in the basement I found an old package of "sun paper" from when my children were small. I eagerly grabbed a clipping from a plant to test the paper and see if it still worked, and it did! During this time, neighborhood walks were the only way to escape the monotony of being in the house. My daily walks had a new purpose as I started collecting uniquely shaped flowers, leaves and weeds to expose on the remaining sheets. Those first few botanical prints lit a creative fire inside of me that I hadn't felt in years and Origin Artistry was born.
The Process
The process beings with a collection uniquely shaped plants, flowers, roots, leaves, weeds, etc. These items are then dried or placed in water until ready to use. In subdued light, a piece of paper or fabric that has previously been treated with equal parts ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide is placed on a board with the plant(s) arranged on top. It is then moved into the sun or under a UV light source and exposed for 3-30 minutes. Once exposed, the paper/fabric is submerged in water and within seconds the glorious Prussian blue starts to appear. Areas that have been exposed to light turn blue while unexposed regions wash clear. Once it is fully rinsed, it is hung to dry. The print continues to darken overnight as it dries completely and oxidizes. Finally, the prints are photographed, edited and printed on various products.
Cyanotype History
The origin of the cyanotype dates to the formative years of photography and uses a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, which when exposed to UV light and washed in water, oxidize to create Prussian blue images. The technique was one of the first non-silver technologies used to create photographic images. Unlike previous silver-based techniques, cyanotype is based on the light sensitivity of iron(III) complexes, making it much less expensive. Invented in 1841 by Sir John Herschel, it became popular after photographer and botanist Anna Atkins used it to produce the first book illustrated by photographs in 1843, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Architects and engineers also used the process to create the original "blue prints" and photographers used cyanotype paper for proofing negatives.