Chasing a Moment: A New Love For Alternative Photography

Hi there, it's been a while since my last blog. So much has changed this year and it has really been an amazing ride so far. One of the biggest changes being my new found love for photography.

I don't really know exactly where it started. I just remember laying in bed with the lights out (as most of my ideas come) I thought about being a child and making a sun print. Little did I know this small grain of thought would be the seed that planted inside of me to take a chance with photography. It was only a few weeks later i ordered my first cyanotype kit.

At first I played it safe. Following the simple silhouette of botanical flowers gently picked from the weeds surrounding my home. I placed them on pre-treated paper made with chemistry I mixed myself. I didn't think too much of it, but I knew I enjoyed watching the photogram develop right in front of my eyes. It was different than painting, it called to me. I was creating sun prints (cyanotypes) almost every day from May - July.

It was from there I had entered my first cyanotype piece in an art competition, the Parma Arts Medley Show. All several of my pieces won 1st or 2nd place in the competition. It was at the opening that I met Laura D'Alessandro who is one of the founders of Cleveland Photo Fest. She was one of the judges for the art show. She pulled me aside and gave me her card and told me she wanted me in her opening this year for photographers. Mind you, I had never really considered myself a photographer but in that moment someone saw something in me that I did not even understand quite yet and that was the beginning to a whole new world of processes.

From studying Anna Atkins and her botanical cyanotypes I began to branch out and become more daring. I wrote a proposal for an artist residency for the Cleveland Print Room. I didn't think much of it at first. I tried my best to create a captivating proposal. About two weeks later I was congratulated in to their first ever residency program for photography.

From then on I began to take more chances like creating gigantic sun prints and throwing them in the lake to capture the wave patterns of Lake Erie. I thought about plants and using their photosynthetic properties to make chemistry when I was running low on cyanotype chemistry. I crushed up plants from the community garden near the house and created my own non toxic chemicals using plants and vegetables and it worked! With further study I found that this process had been done before - way back in the 1800's and only a few people were still doing this type of photography today.

I wanted to take it a step further, so instead of crushing up the plant material I wanted to use the whole part of the plant to create images. It was from there I learned of Chlorophyll Process. Binh Dahn was one of the first pioneers to create prints on leaves in his piece: War on Leaves, in which he showed mainly portraits. As a portrait artist myself this intrigued me so I began my own process photographing my students from the Cudell neighborhood to convert in to Chlorophyll Process prints. Galleries all over Cleveland and beyond started to take interest in my leaf prints. A few weeks later I was interviewed by Dott Von Schneider from Scene Magazine to cover a story on my leaf prints as well. It wasn't until recently did I finally consider myself a photographer.I don't use a big fancy camera, I don't own the latest photoshop but I do have the passion and drive to be different, bold and push the limits on what is photography.

There is so much for me to learn but I have many ideas on where to start heading. With the right research, trial and error one can be a photographer. It's so much more than shoot and snap. It's a moment in time, the way you see the world and an extension of yourself.

I'll always be a watercolor painter at heart but this new phase in my life is worth exploring. Will you explore with me?

For more of my experimental art check out my IG @naive_melody