Geranium petal veins in frontlight & backlight

[rjlittlefield]

This a small section of the petal of a geranium flower, backlighted.



Same section, front lighted.



Alternating between the two:



The entire petal:



I was intrigued that a large contribution to the apparent "darkness" of the veins is just that they're transparent. When lighted from the front, more light goes through the vein and escapes out the rear instead of bouncing back like it does in the white part of the petal. Towards the ends of the petals, the transparency combines with a red pigment to produce what I thought was an interesting effect.

--Rik

Technical details...

The first two images are about 0.96 mm across the field, shot with Nikon CFI 10X objective on 200 mm tube lens (like HERE) and cropped to an interesting section. These are stacks, 50 images at 0.010 mm, mostly Zerene Stacker DMap with a bit of retouching from PMax.

The animation is from the same stacks, with just a small crop around the edges to correct for an accidental shift when I shot them.

The final pair is with Raynox DCR 250 on the same telephoto, single shots at f/22 (no stacking).

[snic320]

Interesting!
Once again giving me more ideas.....

[DQE]

I think that frequenting this forum has caused me to see stacking opportunities where there may be none:

Is there any benefit from some sort of stack or blend of the front and back-illuminated photos?

As usual for photography, there are two basic criteria: aesthetic and informational. In terms of information, not everything that is naturally separate should be combined! But sometimes it helps.

As usual, just some early evening musings...
_________________
-Phil

"Diffraction never sleeps"

[Craig Gerard]

Inverting the images also provides an interesting result


Craig
_________________
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

[madmacro]

Beautiful color, love the pattern and color combination,
Could have miss all this if you have not share, thanks Rik.

[rjlittlefield]

Thanks for stopping in, folks.

snic320, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some of those ideas.

Phil, what did you have in mind? There are definitely some interesting effects you can get by dynamically blending from one to the other. The hard flashing transition that I'm showing here is just what's easy to do with gif.

--Rik

[Craig Gerard]

PS layer blend modes....enjoy


Craig
_________________
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

[rjlittlefield]

Craig, feel free to post some examples of what you're alluding to.

--Rik

[Cyclops]

Very very cool!
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