I have been experimenting with several photographic techniques in recent months. Now that we are between travels, I can spend some time in my studio. I thought I would share a few images from last night’s session.

These are all macro images of ice cubes. I used distilled water, then injected a small amount of soda water into the trays, and froze them in a styrofoam container in the freezer. That causes the water to freeze very slowly, making it crystal clear. The soda water injected via syringe during the freezing time inserts these firework-like threads through the ice.

I then put the ice cube on a glass sheet, and set the camera on a slider to give smooth motion. I fire off photos at 20 frames per second for about 5 or 6 seconds, giving me more than 100 frames of each ice cube. I throw away those completely out of focus at the start and the end, leaving me with approximately 60 frames where part of the ice cube is in focus. Those are then processed through software to do what is called “focus stacking,” taking the tiny sliver of ice in focus in each image and combining them to give a depth of field not possible in any physical camera.

In this case, I have a red LED on the right, and a blue LED light on the left, to give the colors in the ice.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did in making them. These abstract images are my first real successes with this technique after 3 months of trial and error!