Friday, January 3, 2014

Blogging for Thor: Dust in the Wind

Six different anthotype dyes in their raw forms.
Man, I'm really bad at remembering what day things are. I was so happy with myself today, too. I ran errands and got things done. Like an adult. Then I came home, forgot it was Thursday and went to bed. Thankfully, I tend to wake up at 3 AM or so, stay awake a few hours and then go back to sleep. I've convinced myself that so long as my blog is up before dawn on Friday, it's still Thursday. Totally sound logic, right?

Today's blog is going to be short, though. It's mostly a plug for something else I'm doing. I decided to start photographing the different dyes that I use to make anthotypes with! Starting with the dry powders, I'm taking proper photographs of each dye. I'd really love some kind of big, interactive website where you can click on a picture of the dye and have it bring up a sample sheet showing what the dye looks like before and after exposure, with comments on how to prepare it. That'd be pretty awesome, but I have no idea how to make that work. Maybe some sort of weird eBook internet sorcery.

On other fronts: the weather has just been terrible lately. Clouds, rain, fog, clouds, rain, clouds. Even on 'bright' days the light is so filtered and low-contrast that there's hardly any UV light at all to expose prints with. It's officially the off-season for sun printing. As a result, I need to do something else and it seems like a good time to work on articles (haha, not this blog, no one reads this blog) and that vague idea for an anthotype book I keep telling myself I'm writing. Or the visual reference guide to lumen printing papers. For right now, though, I'll be focusing on the anthotype dye documentation.

The complete set of current photographs for this project is here, on my Flickr.


3 comments:

  1. What is your mixing ratio of powder to alcohol?

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    1. It depends on how intense I want the final color to be. The less alcohol used, the brighter the color will be. It also depends on which powder you're talking about and how I want it to react. Paprika, for example, produces an orange color if you use very little alcohol (only enough to make a thick paste), but a yellow color if you use a lot of alcohol.

      The simplest preparation, turmeric, uses about 10 grams of powder to 100ml of alcohol. That's for a very strong yellow, though. Pastel shades could easily halve that amount of powder.

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  2. Thanks, that gives me a place to start.

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