Neptune Pool, Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California

Last December, I took this photograph of the drained and dirty Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle on a drizzly, cold day. It was an ideal subject for the cyanotype process because it was anything but what I remembered it and making it blue would correspond with that memory. I spent many Fridays in February creating the digital negatives and the first "draft" above. However, it was not right.

The scale was off and I wanted more of an abstraction. After some brainstorming with Brent, the above work prints were made. Ironically, I had a little help with the texture in the reflection from the Riverside Hotel in Garden City, Idaho.

Fast forward to July and the digital negatives were made and the next round of cyanotypes, as seen drying on the racks below. The new dimension is 50" x 40".

Yet a third round was created to perfect some of the inconsistencies in exposure and a mock-up was documented in the Atrium Gallery at school. I have the highest hopes of creating a glass version of this prior to Brent's and my collaborative exhibition, Treading Water, in January.