With cameras on almost every phone, anyone can feel like a professional photographer. We’ve seen selfies, nature shots, cat pics, and endless plates of food, but what about camera-less photography.

That’s what New Trier Senior Sarah Rose worked on for the Wilmette Arts Guild, in which artists came together to display their best work during Feb. 2-27.

The show featured a wide variety of artwork and honored creativity as well as proficiency. Sarah Rose, who experimented with a unique photographic process, won the Wilmette Arts Guild Senior Scholarship. At this point, she hopes to use the scholarship to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Rose won the Scholarship with her artwork “Church Window.” She used a photographic process known as cyanotype and imprinted a pattern of a stained-glass window onto photography paper, hence the name “Church Window.” By placing beads at different spots on the paper during exposure, Rose explained, the exposed areas of the paper left the design. The final product resulted in a two-dimensional cyanotype of the beaded design.

“’Church Window’ was made in memory of a Hawaiian Church destroyed in 2006,” said Rose. The senior has been taking photography classes since seventh grade, and so she took more creative liberties in this project.

After researching the church, she also researched alternative photographic processes in order to best portray “Church Window.” Rose then used New Trier’s darkroom to experiment with unique techniques.

She decided to create a cyanotype, which is a photograph that is developed with a distinct blue tint. “Church Window” is similar to a photogram, except she coated watercolor paper in light sensitive chemicals rather than using photo print paper.

Rose commented, “I like to be as hands on as possible, because that adds more of my personal touch and allows me to be even more immersed in my work.”

Making a Cyanotype requires most of the work to be completed in a darkroom. Even though Rose never used a camera, the cyanotype was still developed similarly to camera film. In both cases, unwanted light ruins the art, and they are developed through chemical processes.

However, cyanotype has a complicated development process that can produce more abstract photography, and Rose took advantage of it to best capture her vision for “Church Window.”

“I mixed two chemicals and coated different kinds of paper to test the results,” said Rose, who used water color paper for her cyanotype.

“My process can take a long time, but at the end of making a successful print, I have taken a worthwhile journey.”