I adore the website COLOURlovers.com and their magnificent color blog. I often discover artists, find color insipration, new color trends and yummy patterns. I was recently turned on to Robert Buelteman’s beautiful work of cameraless, lensless, and computer-free photographs, there. COLOURlovers says:
Feeling the need to “explore the tools of (his) medium beyound both their traditional and innovative uses,” and channeling a bit of a mad scientist mentality, Robert Buelteman developed a technique resembling that of Kirlian photography. His tools: jumper cables, fiber optics, and 80,000 volts of electricity. He places flowers and leaves on a color transparency film, on top of that he lays plexiglas with a sheet of metal in between, floating in a liquid silicone. Then he hits everything with an electric pulse which causes the coronas and outlines to appear on the film. The last step he needs to do, is hand-painting it with a white light coming from an optical fiber. It can take up to 150 attempts to get this right. The outcome of all this, images that capture the colors of these plants like we’ve never seen or could ever imagine before. You can find out more about Robert’s series based on this technique in the book, Signs of Life.
