Rendering the Unseen
© Spears
Photographers David & Madeleine Spears just published a book entitled Unseen Companions: Big Views of Tiny Creatures. The pages are filled with extraordinary microscopic images of insects, which reaffirm the limits of our natural optical perception. One of the images I found particularly terrifying is described as “a group of dust mites foraging for human skin on a bedsheet” (see above). I don’t want to believe these creatures exist.
© Spears
On another note, there’s one thing I’ve never understood about this type of photography. Where is the variance in the colors? The images look as if they were painted in a color-by-numbers…like the world is nothing but a pixellated image and, just as when you zoom in on a photo, it becomes a jumble of monochromatic objects. I have tried to research what cameras are used in the process but wind up empty handed. I can’t imagine rendering them in true color is terribly difficult. After all, Margo Herre, a friend of mine in the photography department, photographed cells and microorganisms under a microscope this past semester. Although they were mostly dyed specimens, they were rendered in full color. If someone can provide any answers it would be greatly appreciated. Or else I’ll just assume that we live in one very large pixellated image.
Reality?
Michael George :: Nov.06.2008 :: Miscellaneous, Photographers :: 2 Comments »
Actually, these images aren’t made with a normal light camera at all. the images are made using a scanning electron microscope. (check here for other examples and information: http://www.mos.org/sln/SEM/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_electron_microscope)
a regular camera of course records light bouncing off of objects, a SEM bounces electrons off of an object and records those. the images themselves are actually rendered in gray scale. like many many images in science, these images are colorized making the different subjects in the images move visible or noticable to the viewer. basically they are more like illustrations than a proper traditional photograph.
I knew there was something peculiar about each rendering. My friend must have used a unique approach. She bought an attachment that allowed her to hook in her film camera to the microscope’s lens. Therefore she was shooting exactly what was seen.
I suppose this approach would not work for organisms that are constantly on the move (e.g. the dust mites). Thanks for the reply, I’m no longer in the dark.