flickrfan's soup

Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3

Ever had the urge to wrap your body in photographs? Yes? Well, today, all of your dreams can come true!

Follow this guide to learn how to turn your photos into wearable photo fabric — that’s right fabric.

Use our Photo Fabric Dye Kit and the power of the sun to permanently print images onto most fabrics. This process is quick, easy, and works like magic.

You’ll be draped in photos in no time.

Make Wearable Photos

p.s. Yay! 4by6.com has a free special for Photojojo fans today. They make primo square cards from your Instagram shots & more!

Why it’s cool:

1. You’re wearing photographs.
2. You’re wearing photographs!
3. And, you made them yourself.

Within a few short hours, you’ll have photographs permanently printed on fabric. You don’t even need a darkroom. This stuff comes ready to go out of the bottle. Just mix, paint, and expose. Watch the dye change right before your eyes.

Ingredients:

• Sewing Pattern
  (If you’re new to sewing, you can print on pre-made clothing, too!)
• Fabric
• Photo Fabric Dye
• Negatives
• Scissors
• Scotch Tape
• Masking Tape
• Sponge Brush
• Water
• Measuring Cup or Mixing Bowl
• Portable Hard Surface to work on
• Additive Free Sop
• Washing Machine
• Sewing Machine

Step 1 – Pick your favorite pattern

Buy enough fabric for your pattern and size. We found that 100% cotton that has been prepared for dyeing (PFD on the label) works best. Feel free to experiment, but test small pieces first.

TIP Need a little help sewing? Check out this page for step by step instructions.

Step 2 – Print your negatives

Scan old family photographs or use that amazing digital image you shot yesterday. Inverted your photo in Photoshop to make a negative image, and printed them on 8.5 x 11″ transparencies.

TIP Higher contrast images tend to work better. Boost up your contrast before inverting it.

Step 3 – Plan it out

Think about the layout of your pattern and how you want your images to look in the end.

Do you want all of your images facing a certain direction on your dress? Do they need to be placed vertically on your fabric or horizontally? Will you cover the whole dress or just the skirt?

Cut fabric into manageable parts. This will make it easier to transport and manage during the dyeing steps.

TIP Remember that whole measure twice cut once theory? It’s a good one. Make sure you cut your fabric into pieces that will leave you enough room to cut out your pattern later.

The cut fabric will shrink and fray along the edges in the wash, so don’t cut out your perfect pieces just yet… Just big sections that are easier to work with.

Step 4 – Secure your fabric

Use a portable hard surface to tape your fabric onto. We found a sturdy board does the trick.

You want to be able to pick this up and move it outside. Imagine a windstorm as soon as you walk outside. Make sure your hard work (and delicate materials) stay in place. Tape, tape, tape!

Step 5 – Get ready:

Set up your workstation in a shaded place. Lay out all of the materials you’ll need within arms reach (dye, water, measuring cup, brush, tape).

The dye is light sensitive, so you’ll want to work quickly to minimize unwanted exposure.

Step 6 – Shake, rattle and roll, paint:

Shake your bottle of dye really well before opening. All the good stuff settles to the bottom. Paint it onto your fabric.

Lay your negatives on the coated surface and tape them in place. Remember that windstorm we mentioned?

Trust us, you’d rather spend a little extra time taping all the edges down now than chasing those negatives down your driveway.

Step 8 – Expose!

Just like magic! Take your coated, taped fabric outside and watch the sun do its thing.

On a clear sunny day, exposure is usually around 6-8 minutes. If it’s cloudy, later in the day, or a diluted solution, exposure may take a bit longer.

TIP Do smaller test pieces first to check your desired time.

Step 9 – Rinse and Repeat!

When you’re satisfied with your exposure, take the whole board back into a shady place. Remove your negatives, marvel at your accomplishments, then get that sucker into the wash.

Use HOT water and additive free soap- you don’t want any crazy chemicals mixing with the dye. We used a little Dawn dish soap.

Run your fabric print under water and scrub it with your hands before the washing machine cycle. This stops the developing process, and the wash will remove unexposed dye. Prints will lighten a bit after washing and drying.

Repeat the above steps for the rest of your fabric.

Step 10 – Stitch

Follow the directions on your pattern. Cut. Stitch. Magic!

Voila!

A wearable photograph. You’re welcome! :)

GO Nuts!

• Why stop there? The Photo Fabric Dye can be used on virtually any fabric surface (searching closet now). If sewing seems too much, try making pillow cases, like the photo above, tote bags, t-shirts, shower curtains, even lampshades.
• Tile photos together to make larger prints. Bigger is better right?
• Get inspired by this vid all about using Photo Fabric Dye (from the makers, Lumi!)
• Get artsy with fabric photos! Artist and photojojo fan Margo Duvall, of The MARMAR Studio, has been using the Photo Fabric Dye for installation based art works.

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It’s the perfect time of year to take a break from editing at your computer. Take a stroll outside and breathe in the budding aroma of flowers.

Unbeknown to most folks, those pretty flowers harness the power to produce a stellar photograph! An anthotype to be exact — a photo print made with plant matter.

Spinach, dasies, wine, strawberries, onions, and other plants are all light sensitive. If you leave them out in the sun long enough, you’ll have your very own plant prints, just like that.

Not only do plants feed us and give us shelter, but they make photos for us, too! Is there anything these guys can’t do?

How to Make Photo Prints with Plants

p.s. We’re judging Viewbug’s self-portrait contest. Check it out for chance at $100 in our shop and a flat screen TV!

What’s an Anthotype?

The concept behind Sir John Herschel‘s anthotypes goes like this. Grind up plant matter and paint the juices onto paper. Plop a positive film on top and allow nature to execute its handy work.

You can use all kinds of petals, leaves and berries for this process.

Here are just a few to choose from:
Note that the final color may not be the color of the original plant!

Spinach: 4-5 hours, light green (This is what we used.)
Daisy: 1 week, sepia
Red Wine: 1 week, burgundy
Pansy: 2 weeks, purple
Onion: 3-4 weeks, orange
Beetroot: 4-6 weeks, fuchsia

There is one catch. Anthotypes will fade if left out on display. You can slow down the exposure a couple of different ways.

Artist Binh Dahn encases his work in resin. Rosemary Horn exhibits her anthotypes but covers them so that viewers have to lift a flap to view the print. This protects her work but also makes you think about the fragility of nature.

Ingredients:

• Newspaper
• Rubber gloves
• Grubby clothes
• Petals, berries or leaves
• Blender or mortar and pestle
• Denatured alcohol (found at hardware stores)
• Container for mixing
• Coffee filter or cheesecloth
• Foam brush
• Hefty watercolor paper (300gsm suggested)
• Contact print frame
• A positive image on transparency film
• OR items to produce a photogram
• The Sun

STEP 1: Transform the plant into emulsion

Once you discover the plant that suits your fancy, it’s time to blend it up. In the case of spinach, use only the leaves and you will receive a darker pigment.

Splash some denatured alcohol in the mix. Alcohol is an ideal diluter because it helps extract the chlorophyll from the plants. Blend until it looks juicy.

Strain your mixture through a coffee filter or cheesecloth into a bowl. Drip, drip, drip.

STEP 2: COAT YOUR PAPER

Brushes with hair shed all over your paper, so you may try a foam brush.

Dampen your brush with water, so it doesn’t suck up all the plant goop. Dip it in your juice and coat your paper any funky way you like. Make sure you get it evenly spread out.

Since the sun bleaches the light areas of your positive, begin with as saturated a color as possible. This may require several applications.

Dry in a dark place to avoid premature exposing.

STEP 3: Frame it

Grab your positive film and arrange it on top of your dry piece of coated paper. Place it into your contact print frame and close it up tight.

You can also use a regular frame as long as the positive stays in place. Contact print frames are really the way to go if you can get a hold of one. They have a hinged back that lets you check the exposure without accidentally moving the positive.

You can snag a reasonably priced contact print frame at B & H Photo.

STEP 4: Give it to the sun

Find a place in your yard that has the brightest sun and leave your soon to be anthotypes there to cook. Check on them periodically to make sure they are not being blocked by shadows.

Now it’s time to wait. The length of your exposure depends on the weather conditions, so if it’s an overcast day, give it more time.

STEP 5: FINAL RESULT!

Admire your print!

Anthotypes are low contrast, but instead produce a subtle and delicate looking print.

From here, you’ll want to store it away from the sun. You might want to scan your anthotype. That way, even if it fades, you’ll be able preserve what it looked like forever.

Take it Further

©Rosemary Horn

1.) Expose your petals while you pedal, like artist Rosemary Horn. She attaches anthotypes and chlorophyll prints to her bike!

2.) Recommended Reading: Anthotypes by Malin Fabbri. The plant index is especially helpful with tips on which plants to use.

3.) Make a fancy food centerpiece. Place a stencil or positive directly onto fruit and put it in the sun!

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You have a leftover box of photo paper from Photo 101, and it’s been taunting you from your shelf.

You could swear you once heard it wimper into the cold, dark night, “Make photos with me!” But, alas, you have no dark room or chemicals with which to make prints!

Good news: you can still make photos with it.

You don’t even need chemicals or an enlarger.

It’s the same concept as sun printing with a surprise appearance by analog’s bizzaro world counterpart: digital!

(All thanks to our pal Mike Dunckley for sharing his photos and showing us how.)

Make Photos at Home without Chemicals

p.s. Our phoneography blog, We Love Phoneography, is having a contest today! Check it out to try your luck to possibly win a Wood Camera iPhone Case or Cell Lenses.

Why It’s Cool

Making photos in the darkroom is endless hours of fun, but building one at home can pose a little bit of a challenge. If you don’t have the space to keep a photo enlarger or aren’t into working with harsh wet chemicals, what’s a photographer to do?

Here’s a way around it! Make photograms using black and white photo paper and the sun. Instead of preserving your exposure with chemicals, you can preserve it by scanning it. The image on your photo paper will eventually fade away, but it’ll be eternally preserved in pixels.

In short photograms are a way of making photos by directly placing objects or negatives onto light-sensitive paper. You might’ve heard of cyanotypes or sun prints — it’s the same concept!

What you need

• Objects that you can use to make an image (small enough to fit on your photo paper)
• The sun or a lamp
• Any size black & white photo paper
• A dark room (any room where you can completely block out light)
• A light proof box big enough to fit your photo paper — an old photo paper box works well
• A flatbed scanner
• A sheet of glass that fits over your photo paper (optional)

STEP 1: Plan Your Photo

Decide what you want your photo to look like. Think about how photograms work — if your object is opaque, then your image will look like a solid shape. If it’s a little transparent, the image will have texture.

We used leaves, flowers, and our hand, but you can pretty much use anything — paper cut-outs, confetti, plastic toys, ribbon … yep, anything!

You can even make tiny prints out of film negatives. The bigger the negative, the bigger the print. You can also add drawings or text to your photogram by using mylar (a clear plastic sheet) or transparency sheets and markers.

Did you know you can make transparencies out of Impossible Project instant film? Yup, those can be turned into photograms, too!

STEP 2: Light Proof Your Paper

Find the darkest room in your house. Closets or bathrooms without windows work best. You can also block out windows with dark fabric.

Just make sure it’s dark enough that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. You’re working with photo paper, and it’s very sensitive to light.

Gather your photo paper (we used 5″ x 7″ Ilford Multigrade RC in Satin, but any kind should work), your photo subjects, and your light-proof box. Take them into your chamber o’ photo-makery a.k.a. the dark room you just prepared.

Before you turn out the lights, memorize where you’ve placed everything on your work surface. You’ll be using them in the dark.

STEP 3: Prep Your Paper

When you’re set, turn off the lights.

Now that it’s pitch-black, it’s safe to open up your box of photo paper. Take out one sheet and place it inside your light proof box.

Compose your photo subjects onto the page. This is what’s going to make up your image! Once you’re done, close your lightproof box again.

Before you turn the lights on again, double check that your box of photo paper is closed, as well as your lightproof box with your single sheet of photo paper in it (so you don’t expose all that paper!).

STEP 4: Prep Your Light

You can choose between exposing your photo with the sun or with a lamp. Your exposure time will vary depending on which you go with, so keep that in mind.

Take your lightproof box with your one photo sheet in it to where you’ll be exposing your photo. If you’re using the sun, you can take it directly outside or you can set it by a window that gets direct sunlight.

If you’re using a lamp, you’ll be placing it right under that lamp where the light evenly hits the entire sheet.

Open your lightproof box, and double check that your composition is just how you want it.

TIP!: You might want to use a sheet of glass to flatten your objects. This makes the edges of your image sharper. An easy way to get a sheet of glass is by using the glass that comes in a photo frame.

STEP 5: Make an Exposure

Now that you have everything in place, you’ll wait for the photo to expose! In bright midday sunlight, 30 minutes to an hour should give you a decent image.

With a lamp light, it can take 1-4 hours to get the same results. The longer you have it exposed to light the darker the image will be.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting and letting the light do its magic. To pass the time you could make yourself a cup of tea or watch some Downton Abbey … or both.

How do you choose when to stop your exposure? When you see that the photo paper is much darker than its original color, your image is ready. It might take a couple of test runs to get just what you want, but that’s what’s so fun about making photos in the darkroom.

Here’s an idea of how long Mike exposed these photos for: yellowish plant photo exposed for 1.5 hours under a lamp, the hand exposed for 1.5 hours under a 100W work lamp (the hand was a matboard cutout in case you were wondering!), the orange exposed for 2 hours in sunlight, the purple colored plant exposed for 3 hours in occasional sunlight through a window.

STEP 6: Scan It Before It Disappears!

When your photo’s done, take the sheet of glass off if you were using one, and close the lightproof box. This will stop the exposure for the time being.

Since you aren’t using fixing chemicals, you’ll preserve your photo by scanning it.

Set up your scanner, open up your lightproof box, and place the sheet with your exposure on it on the scanner bed.

Scan it. Open up your image in any photo editing program, and invert it. This’ll make it look like a positive image, since photograms make images that look like negatives. If you like how it looks as a negative, you can leave it that way, too!

There you have it! Your creation, in its full glory. Beautiful, isn’t it?

STEP 7: Edit As You Please

You might notice dust or other bits that you don’t want on your image. To get rid of them, use a spot removal tool such as the Spot Healing tool in Photoshop.

At this point, it’s a free-for-all. You might want to up the contrast, play with color, or saturation.

You might want to save the original scan, so you can experiment with different renditions (think of it as a film negative you can go back to and make lots of different kinds of prints from!).

Your paper exposure won’t last forever since you’re not using any wet chemicals to preserve the image. It’s up to you whether you want to throw it out, keep using it to layer more exposures (save it in the lightproof box, if so), or hang it on the wall and watch it change over time.

More Ideas to Try

• Make one exposure, then layer more objects on top for a second less contrasty image.
• Making a photogram indoors in artificial light gives you more control over your photogram since it’s steady light.
• Use pieces of cardboard as stencils to shape the light as it hits the page.
• Having trouble getting your composition right? Tape your subject(s) onto a piece glass first, then place that on the photographic paper.

Mike Dunckley is a photographer who was born in the UK and is now based in Delaware. All photos were made by Mike with the exception of the one above which was made by his mum.

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