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I quit dry brushing pit walls after a guy in Tucson showed me how much faster a spray bottle works
I spent my whole first field season dry brushing every level before photographing it, and my hands would cramp up by lunch. Last month at a site near Tucson a grad student handed me a cheap spray bottle and said just mist the wall before you shoot it, and honestly it took me two tries to believe her. The dust settles right down, flakes pop out in the photos, and I cut my documentation time per level roughly in half, maybe 15 minutes saved every single one. I still dry brush loose dirt off first so I am not spraying mud, but that one change stuck with me. Has anyone else switched to misting, or am I late to something everybody in the Southwest already does?
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ellis.charles10d ago
15 minutes per level adds up fast, like by the end of a 40 level site you're basically getting a whole extra day back. What I'm curious about is whether the misting changes how the flakes actually read in the photos once they dry back down, because wet vs dry surfaces can mess with color and shadow in ways that don't show up till you're back at the lab sorting images. Did the Tucson grad student mention anything about waiting for the wall to dry a bit before shooting, or is she spraying and snapping right away? And does the mist hold up on really crumbly stuff or does it risk pulling loose matrix off the face?
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