About the Image(s)

This is a true abstract image. To me a good abstract is a picture where the viewer cannot tell what the subject was derived from. Tartaric crystal can be purchased from many pharmacies in powder form. I use two small pieces of glass both 3” square; put a small amount of tartaric powder on the bottom glass and then melt it to liquid form, it melts at low temperature. As soon as it is in liquid form immediately cap the liquid with the second piece of glass and let cool. You will need two polarizing filters, one in back of the glass sandwich and one on your camera lens in order to see colors.

Melted moth balls also works very well for colorful crystals, do not melt moth balls in the house or your home will smell like moth balls for a few days. You will need some type of a devise to mount your glass sandwich to so you can photograph the crystal pattern. The area photographed of this crystal design was one inch across the horizontal format.

The original was a 35mm Velvia slide copied into a digital file. I do not use a film scanner for copying slides into digital files. I find it much easier and faster to use my Nikon digital body with my 200 mm macro lens with the slide mounted to my copy box with the lighting source balanced to 5000K.

The lens will focus to 1X1 life size and works perfectly. The exposure to copy the slide is ISO 200 --- ¼ second @ f/8. I use aperture preferred mode.

This is very specialized macro photography, I have only touched on the basics. If you are interested in this kind of macro photography I will be glad to email you more detailed instructions regarding this process. I will admit this is a tedious and time consuming process to have a successful outcome with vivid colors and pleasing composition.