Honorable Mention
Let Sparks Fly
DESCRIPTION
An abstract study of color and depth. I was interested in the broken-glass-like effect, as well as the sparks-like effect. I deliberately use the coverslip here that normally just covers the subject of study and have crystals on this too which aids the three dimensionality of the work.
The image is of saccharine crystals photographed at 200 magnification using polarised light.
This was my most time consuming work so far. I manually took over 4000 photographs that were stacked into about 250 images which were stitched. This process though aided by computer is far from automatic and it took me over 300 hours to complete. The image I created can be printed over 1.5m as the resolution is very high.
AUTHOR
I'm a Cambridge based secondary (high school) teacher and photographer.I explore texture, colour, perspective, light, shade and translucency using mineral, vegetable and animal matter prepared with skill for the microscope and camera.
Most of my pieces first involve preparation of a slide, which can take can take several days of technical work involving staining and lab equipment. Microscopes have a very limited focus depth and small field of view. I create compositions by taking hundreds or thousands of photographs together with focus stacking and stitching, both algorithmic and manual.
I use a variety of lighting techniques, quite often utilising polarised light.
There are wonderful visions of abstract beauty hidden from view and my goal is to compose these and bring them to colourful light.
