Fluid Dynamics Cyanotypes

In other news, i am sometimes also doing experimental photography. My newest exploits are cyanotypes of some of the beautiful flows collected in van Dykes An Album of Fluid Motion.

The pictures were taken from the scanned book. I applied a sigmoid curve to the colors for increased contrast and printed them on transparent film for the cyanotype exposure. The pictures were not mirrored in gimp (as they do not contain any text), but exposed with the transparent image backwards, so that the printer color is directly on the bottom cyanotype side for increased resolution. That’s why they turned out mirrored over the originals. In some, you can see the halftoning of the B/W Laserprinter i used.

turbulent water jet

von Kármán vortex street

shock in front of a cylinder made visible by interferometry

second order flow around an oscillating cylinder

cut through a smoke ring