macro

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Amazing Photography Science

Winter’s Magic: Dramatic Ice Crystals Formed in Ephemeral Spheres

A simple mixture of corn syrup, dish detergent, and water creates magical winter snow globes when blown into bubbles on snow. Frosty shapes dance across the fragile transparent bubbles, starting out as distant stars that expand and almost tesselate to form a continuous surface pattern. The straightforward yet delicate DIY project is dramatically documented by Ontario-based nature photographer Don Komarechka in his short film “Winter’s Magic.” Komarechka’s video features the best clips from over 400 takes that were originally shot for the BBC’s Forces of Nature documentary series. The artist works in macro, landscape, and nature photography. He also teaches workshops, and sells prints of his work, from snowflakes to spiders, on his website. For the curious, Komarechka explains the process and the technical aspects of the project on YouTube. (via The Kid Should See This)

Photography

Macro Photographs of Ultraviolet Lit Flowers Display a Dazzling Array of Neon Colors

Slava Semeniuta, the Russian photographer known online as Local Preacher (previously) uses ultraviolet light to capture plants in electrifying shades of pink, yellow, and green. For his recent series, Granular Creatures, Semeniuta used macro photography to capture flecks and particles unseen by the naked eye. These opalescent figures have an otherworldly glow—emanating dazzling light from their shiny petals and luminescent stamens. You can see more of his surprisingly hued photographs and digital manipulations on his Instagram and Behance.

Art Photography

Macro Photography Reveals the Dazzling Scales and Multi-Colored Hairs That Cover Butterfly Wings

Chris Perani uses macro photography to capture the microscopic details found on butterflies’ wings, such as multi-colored hairs and iridescent scales. To photograph with such precision, the photographer uses a 10x microscope objective attached to a 200mm lens, which presents an almost non-existent depth of field. “The lens must be moved no more than 3 microns per photo to achieve focus across the thickness of the subject which can be up to 8 millimeters,” Perani explains to Colossal. “This yields 350 exposures, each with a sliver in focus, that must be composited together.” In total this accounts for 2,100 separate exposures combined into a single image. For more detailed observations of butterfly wings, visit Perani’s website. (via Colossal Submissions)

Photography Science

Microsculpture: Macro Photographs of Iridescent Insects Composed of 10,000 Images by Levon Biss

Iridescent Bark Mantis

Photographer Levon Biss (previously) shoots highly detailed images of insect specimens for his continuing series Microsculpture, combining 8,000 to 10,000 individual shots to produce the final piece. Included in this selection are the shield bug and tricolored jewel beetle, which were both collected by famous naturalists. The former was collected by Charles Darwin during a visit to Australia in 1836, and brought back to the UK on the famed HMS Beagle. The luminescent tricolored jewel beetle was collected exactly two decades later by his contemporary Alfred Russell Wallace.

Biss has current exhibitions at the Hessischer Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany through August 5, 2018 and Naturama in Svenborg, Denmark through November 25, 2018, in addition to his first US exhibit Microsculpture: The Insect Photography of Levon Biss which opened at the Houston Museum of Natural Science earlier this month. You can buy limited edition archival pieces on his online print shop, and view interactive versions of his highly detailed composite images on his Microsculpture website.

Detail of Iridescent Bark Mantis

Detail of Iridescent Bark Mantis

Tortoise Beetle

Detail of Tortoise Beetle

Detail of Tricolored Jewel Beetle

Tricolored Jewel Beetle

Shield Bug

Photography Science

Macro Infrared Photographs Unlock the Depth of Green in a Stunning Array of Canary Island Plants

All images via Field

Marcus Wendt, creative director at the London-based studio Field, recently traveled to the island of Lanzarote to shoot a series of macro images of the region’s native plants. His project, Suprachromacy transforms cacti and other light-absorbing species into vibrant, multi-hued beings through infrared photography. Needles and spines of one species glow bright blue, while others are illuminated in deep orange tones.

The project was inspired by Isaac Newton’s quote, “For the Rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them, there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color.” Its intension is to spark inquiry about a color’s origin. Is color an inherent part of the object? Or is it an individualized sensation?

“For us, these alien color spectra spark ideas about how we see color, how much depth is locked up in the color green, and whether color is a property or a sensation,” says Wendt. “And also what plants might look like on planets under a different colored sun.”

You can see other technology and photo-based projects by Field on their website and Instagram. (via My Modern Met)

Amazing Photography Science

Photo of a Single Atom Wins Top Prize in Science Photography Contest

Image © David Nadlinger / Oxford University

You might need your glasses for this one. Quantum physicist David Nadlinger from the University of Oxford managed to capture an image that would have been impossible only a few years ago: a single atom suspended in an electric field viewable by the naked eye. The amazing shot titled “Single Atom in an Ion Trap” recently won the overall prize in the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) science photo and imaging contest. You can see the atom in the shot above, the tiny speck at the very center.

To be clear, the photo doesn’t capture just the atom, but rather light emitted from it while in an excited state. From the EPSRC:

‘Single Atom in an Ion Trap’, by David Nadlinger, from the University of Oxford, shows the atom held by the fields emanating from the metal electrodes surrounding it. The distance between the small needle tips is about two millimetres.

When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet colour the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph. The winning picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the ion trap.

Laser-cooled atomic ions provide a pristine platform for exploring and harnessing the unique properties of quantum physics. They can serve as extremely accurate clocks and sensors or, as explored by the UK Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub, as building blocks for future quantum computers, which could tackle problems that stymie even today’s largest supercomputers.

“The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the minuscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality,” shared Nadlinger. “A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed the numbers to be on my side, and when I set off to the lab with camera and tripods one quiet Sunday afternoon, I was rewarded with this particular picture of a small, pale blue dot.”

You can follow more of his discoveries—large and small—on Twitter. (via PetaPixel)