MAKE | HOW TO – Print on leaves

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2006/10/26 @ 2:28 pm
Category Art & Design

Rad, here’s how to create photographs on living leaves through a process called Chlorophyll photography… [via] – Link.

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BY Phillip Torrone

Editor at large - Make magazine. Creative director - Adafruit Industries, contributing editor - Popular Science. Previously: Founded - Hack-a-Day, how-to editor - Engadget, Director of product development - Fallon Worldwide, Technology Director - Braincraft.

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7 Responses to HOW TO – Print on leaves

Cathaholic on October 26th, 2006 at 1:54 pm said:

So, this isn’t permanent. Is there any means of sealing this image into the leaf and then letting it dry? I’m almost certain that if you were to think long enough and hard enough on this then you should be able to find a way to make it permanent. Anybody have an idea? Perhaps if you were to remove it from the fluid and quickly dehydrate the leaf to keep it from losing color, that might do something.

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Cathaholic on October 26th, 2006 at 6:35 pm said:

Here’s an idea. I know that everyone out there has a slide projector so this might not be of use to anyone. Haha, just kidding. Anyhow, rather than using a slide projector you might be able to use a method of contact exposure as you might use with blueprint photography, in which case all you need to do is print off the image on a transparency to the size neccesary and then to put it on top of the leaf and expose to a light source, maybe as simple a source as your window. Then continue from there. I don’t know if this would work the same but if anyone tries it out before me then say something.

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Cathaholic on October 26th, 2006 at 8:34 pm said:

Turns out I was right, here are images taken by a man named Binh Danh http://www.svam.org/Exhibits/Remembrance/Artists/Main_dir/BD_main.html
Also,I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone has ever done this with flower pedals instead.

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haramsuci on October 3rd, 2007 at 6:49 am said:

You can find the same method of chlorophyll print in the notorious “The Book of Chemistry Experiments” (New York: Golden Press, Inc., 1960).
I’ve also tried other types of leaves, such as guava and mango (both are tropical fruit), by contact printing them with 135 B/W negatives on direct strong midday-sunlight — really strong, since I live in tropical Indonesia — right through after I pick them from the trees.
Unfortunately, I still can’t show my images here, because they brake down during my experiments to attain the images.
My method created brown tone image on leave, just as of Binh Danh, but with very low contrast.
I also guess — haven’t try this yet — to develop the image, such in tutorial above, with hydro-sulfate acid (H2SO4) — from battery acid — since this acid reacts with sucrose (sugar cane) to form black carbon.

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Marius Manastireanu on September 29th, 2011 at 1:40 pm said:

the link doesn’t work

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Marius Manastireanu on September 29th, 2011 at 1:40 pm said:

the link doesn’t work

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Donna Pearson Johnson on November 5th, 2011 at 1:16 pm said:

Would love to try this for a family reunion idea if I could go to the link to learn how to do it- can you please repost link?

Thanks!

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