Photograph as a Hand-Coated Cyanotype Print

Format

Text Parameterized

Inputs

attached_photo (image) · Required aspect_ratio (text) · Optional · Default: vertical 4:5

Outputs

cyanotype_print_photograph (image)

Replace the ${…} placeholders with your values before using this prompt. See parameters and defaults below.

Turn the attached photo into one cyanotype sun print, and photograph that print as a physical object. Use a ${aspect-ratio:vertical 4:5} frame.

THE SHEET
Hand-coated cyanotype on thick cotton rag paper, lying flat on a plain pale surface in soft daylight. Show one image only. It fills most of the sheet, leaving bare paper as a margin on all four sides. Keep all four edges of the sheet inside the frame, with at least one fibrous torn edge. The sheet is gently cockled from being washed and dried, so the daylight catches low waves across it and the sheet casts a soft, thin shadow along one side.

THE COATING
The sensitiser was brushed on by hand, so the blue does not end in a straight line. Each margin shows the ends of brush strokes, small bare patches where the coating skipped, and a few stray blue flecks on the white paper.

TONE
Use Prussian blue in the shadows and pale cyan through the midtones. The brightest parts of the photo burn out to the raw white of the paper, with no blue left in them. Use no grey, black, or second colour. Where a white highlight meets the blue, the border is abrupt, like a contact print, not a soft photographic gradient. Let fine paper fibre show through the blue as irregular grain.

WHAT CARRIES OVER FROM THE PHOTO
Keep the subjects of the photo, their number, position, and outlines exactly as they are. Add nothing to the scene and remove nothing from it. Faces and bodies keep their own shape. Read the photo as a tonal map only: what was bright becomes paper white; what was dark becomes deep blue.

FAILURE CONDITIONS
1. Any letters, numbers, signatures, logos, stamps, or watermarks anywhere in the frame is a failure. Their count must be zero.
2. Fewer than three of the sheet's four edges visible inside the frame is a failure.
3. More than five percent of the sheet carrying a colour other than blue, cyan, or bare paper white is a failure.
4. A different number of people, animals, or vehicles than in the photo is a failure.
5. Any grid, graph ruling, measuring scale, or technical drawing line anywhere on the sheet is a failure. That would be a blueprint, and this is not one.
6. The brightest parts of the image staying pale blue instead of becoming bare paper white is a failure. Avoid laying a blue filter over the photo.
7. A margin whose blue ends in a clean, straight mechanical line on all four sides is a failure.
8. Anything in the frame other than the sheet and the surface it rests on is a failure. Include no hands, clips, second sheet, or props.

IF YOU CANNOT DO ALL OF IT
Prioritize the burnt-out paper-white highlights and the unchanged subject count. If the brushed margin conflicts with the rest, simplify it to one brushed edge and leave the other three cut clean.