Natures very own Photoshop effects :) You would be forgiven for thinking the image to the left was manipulated using photoshop or some other image manipulation software however, this image was created using a very old technique called Kirlian photography. The technique was accidentally discovered by Semyon Kirlian, who in 1939 found that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a source of high voltage, small corona discharges (created by the strong electric field at the edges of the object) create an image on the photographic plate.
Kirlian made controversial claims that the image he was studying might be compared with the human aura. An experiment advanced as evidence of energy fields generated by living entities involves taking Kirlian contact photographs of a picked leaf at set periods, its gradual withering being said to correspond with a decline in the strength of the aura. However it may simply be that the leaf loses moisture and becomes less electrically conductive, causing a gradual weakening of the electric field at the drier edges of the leaf. The freaky part is that in some experiments, if a section of a leaf was torn away after the first photograph, a faint image of the missing section would remain when a second photograph was taken. James Randi has suggested that this effect was due to contamination of the glass plates, which were reused for both the "before" and "after" photographs.
Here are some more awesome Kirlian Images :)
So how'd they do it ?
There are two common methods for capturing realtime Kirlian Images. The first image on the left shows the ground wire directly attached to the object. When shooting like this many times the ground wire will be visible in the photograph. To remove the wire in the photograph, the second method may be used. A small hole is made in the black paper background. The ground wire is fed through the hole to touch the object being photographed. Resting the object on top of the ground wire, gives a nice black background and a ground for the object without any obtrusive wires. You may also use a small grounded copper plate in place of the wire as long as the object you are shooting makes contact with the plate through the hole of the black paper background.
Its been 4 days, all your loyal fans are patiently waiting for an update, cant u change nappy's and update ur blog at the same time? ;)
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