Along the Edges

I have several photos of the edges of things from some recent shoots. Above is the edge of a piece of a mirror; the glass is about 2 or 3mm thick. And though the sharp edges of glass may look straight, they are often full of nicks and dings and chipped surfaces.

The next photo is the edge of an aerogel. This very fragile material is one of the worlds best insulators (it's about 97% air) and is also the least dense substance on earth. It's created in laboratories and used by NASA for insulating spacecraft, among other more earth-based uses.

This sample of aerogel was contributed kindly by a fan of Morning Macro. Thank you, Matt!

See if you can guess from the next two photos what they are before reading further.

The two photos above are different edges on a typical disposable plastic tape dispenser. The first is the cutting edge for the tape, and the second is an edge of the curved body of the dispenser, with a printed insert inside.

The last two photos that follow are more from the crossed polars shoots. These are the cut edges of bubble wrap, and you can see the wall thickness of the "bubbles" clearly in these shots. Remember, the colors in these photos were present in the actual subjects, and were the fascinating result of using two polarized films in opposing alignment, not because it was lit with colored lights. Only white light was used in the capture of these photos.

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Crossed Polar Light Experiments 1

The photo above is soapy water sprayed as a thin film on plexiglass, frozen, and shot using cross-polarized light. Without crossed polars, this looks just black and grey.

While looking at some beautiful photomicography (pretty much the same as what I do, only using a microscope instead of foolishly hand-holding the camera like me), I stumbled across a way of using two polarized films to highlight details in a subject typically invisible to our eyes.

Your sunglasses may be polarized, and you would know because when you look at a shiny car in the sun, the reflections change noticeably. This is because the polarized film of your sunglass lens is only allowing light at one angle to pass through. To try out this concept, I simply used the two lenses of an old pair of shades.

If you take these two lenses out of the frame and hold them up against eachother, stacked, you will notice that things look just a bit darker through them. But, rotate one of them 90° from the other, and you will notice you see nothing through them. Like magic, they turn black against one another.

In photomicography using crossed polars, one places their light source directly beneath the subject, with a polarized film in between them. In this case, one of my sunglass lenses.

The other sunglass lens is situated between the subject and my camera lens (called the "objective" in fancy microscope-jockey terms), and I simply used tape to hold it in place over the front of my lens. It is important when shooting this way, to hold the camera and position the lens so that the two polarized films (sunglass lenses) are at 90° angles to eachother. They should "black out" eachother, but you can still see the subject between them.

If your subject is plastic, or a crystal structure, you should see rainbow patterns inside them as you dial in the correct angle of the lens/polarizer relative to the light/polarizer. And this is how it's done. I want to reiterate that all these photos were made using white light, no colored lights or fancy computer tricks involved.

Scientists shoot minerals and other substances using this technique (though far more complex than I have explained here) and are able to identify materials by the way they scatter light between the two polarizing films. I am just using it to make pretty pictures.

Above is another view of the frozen soapy water. I think it was starting to melt at this point. The three last images below are different views of bubble wrap using cross polarized light.

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Creepy Doll Eye

You know those dolls with the eyes that open and close? They're creepy right?

Here's a closeup of the eye of one. You can look deep into the empty cold soul of this doll if you stare long enough. But you must be brave. For she is also looking deeply into yours... Creeeeepy.

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Holographic Paper

The kids have some holographic craft paper. I actually think it's aluminum or mylar, not paper.

Here are some microphotos of it, whatever it's made of. Its beautiful, prismatic shine is lots of fun for the girls, and also still mesmerizing to me.

I found it interesting to see that the aluminum/mylar/paper is embedded with millions of microscopic reflective "pixels" that split light into colors from the spectrum. Totally cool. I'm also intrigued how much these photos look like photos of an LCD display.

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Cranberry Skins

Here are the skins of cranberries Sarah strained from the mix while making cranberry curd for a Thanksgiving tart. I like how they look like cellophane or vinyl. I've done nothing to these photos except minor adjustments for the color of the light from my flash and any variance in their exposure. These skins were shot on a piece of plexiglass with the light coming from below at the side, in order to highlight their translucent character.

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Homage to How It's Made: Broken Stick End, Holiday Ribbon, Bread Tab Printing

I love the simple, eclectic, postmodern-consumer poetry of the How It's Made episode descriptions in my Tivo guide. "How It's Made 5- Episode 4: Javelins, Cuckoo Clocks, Hearts of Palm, Windshield Wipers."

"Stuffed Olives, Astrolabes, Western Saddles."
"Pencils, Metal Recycling, Coffee."
"Sails, Walnuts, Wheel Immobilizers, Honeycomb Structural Panels."
"Giant Valves, Sardines, Barographs, Disposable Diapers."
"Accordions, Pineapples, Artificial Joints."

It's just too awesome. The items in these lists never go together. The production of the show is no-nonsense. It doesn't attempt to tell any story beyond what steps are necessary to manufacture the subject. The musical accompaniment sounds like simple muzak from the bonus CD in your Cheerios box. The show could not be done any more perfectly and I love it exactly like it is.

So, I'm going to try to imitate the How It's Made descriptions with my next several posts. I am not consciously trying to put incongruent items together, I'm just grabbing what I've got and posting. They might all be bugs or not. They might all be man-made or not. Doesn't matter. But they are simply the product of me taking what I've got and putting it out there.

Broken Stick End, Holiday Ribbon, Bread Tab Printing

Above we have the broken end of a stick, which was about 8mm wide in total. You can observe the xylem and phloem holes, through which would course the water, sap, and other nourishment the tree needs to grow. You can also see the fuzzy pulpiness of the wood toward the left side. We've seen paper pulp before, so here it is before processing.

Below is a microphoto of shiny holiday ribbon. This particular one was a translucent piece of ribbon, and unexpectedly (or maybe not in retrospect) the threads of the ribbon are clear. Pretty cool. You can also see how it is made of a simple woven pattern of these threads. I'm guessing they are acrylic.

At the bottom we have a number which had been printed on the closure tab for a loaf of bread. You know, those little plastic dealies you crimp on after twisting the extra bread bag closed? I shot the number because I like numbers and I like printing, and found this particular printing process left a cool texture within the number.

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Hoboken Studio Tour/Tiny Lab: Does Anybody Have a Lozenge?

A visitor to my Tiny Lab exhibit for the Hoboken Studio Tour asked me to shoot his cough drop. Apparently it's been in his pocket for a while, Andrew Mikhael confessed on his blog.

The photo above is the surface of the lozenge, and the photo below is a piece of the torn wrapper that had bonded with a part of the cough drop, and been peeled away. You can see how the plastic had stretched and snapped as the wrapper was torn off.

Thanks to everyone who came out and visited my exhibit. And thank you to friends and family for your constant support and encouragement.

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Fastenation

I'm sorry I have not posted in about 7 days... we were out of town, and the past few days after getting back have been kinda hectic. But I'll try to keep pace here as we move through the rest of the summer.

Yes I know I spelled "fascination" incorrectly up there. It's a pun, freak. Today, we're looking closely at some fasteners.

Above you see the business end of a typical snap button. Looks a lot like a turbine jet engine, doesn't it? It's mate is below, reminiscent of a manhole in the street.

Below is Velcro™, or something like it. I think the generic name is fastening tape or sumthin'. This particular "fastening tape" was a feature on the of one of my girls' shoes.

I eat zippers. No, the thing below is not a monorail or a tiny tunnel for lower case n's. It's a zipper, silly.

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I'd like to order a Tab, please

I found this on the dresser. It's the plastic tab from a store price tag which had been removed from recently purchased clothing. I've posted it today because even this most pedestrian little item is interesting to see magnified.

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Squishy Foam!

This is foam, close-up; the soft stuff used to protect fragile things. I use this as padding for one of my lenses in a small hard case. It looks grey when viewed with your eyes. At this level of magnification, we see the beautiful little prismatic bubbles that make up the structure of the foam. Cool!

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Kitschy Sunday

These are some facial features of the girls' Polly Pocket, Arial. She's a small and attractive mermaid/human. I like the kitschiness of these photos.

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Giant Sucking Sound

Mimi wanted to see her straw up close, so I shot this while she was eating. I think it's kind of abstract and modern in a way. My composition could have been better, I wasn't thinking about that at all when I shot the image.

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