Little Acorn, Tick, Price Label

The acorn above was about 10mm wide, a teensy tiny little acorn found in the park while the girls climbed and played.

Below is a photo of the dried remains of the tick that tried to eat Sarah alive. She found it on her leg after we returned from Stone Barns, a beautiful farm near Westchester, NY. She was worried she had popped its head off when she yanked it out, so we're happy to see the head intact here. This tick was about 1.2 - 2mm long.

This pic isn't super sharp to my liking—I had to use my extra macro adapter to make the tick large enough for the photo and this affects the sharpness. What happens at magnifications this high, with lenses as big as the 65mm MP-E, is a distortion called diffraction. Essentially, overall sharpness decreases with high magnification and high f-stop (small aperture). This is different than a shallow depth of field, which we also experience in high-magnification photography.

OK, enough with the macro/microphotography lesson!

At the bottom, we have a close-up of the print on a price label. I love the distressed typography and the texture of paper pulp.

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Homage to How It's Made: Broken Stick End, Holiday Ribbon, Bread Tab Printing

I love the simple, eclectic, postmodern-consumer poetry of the How It's Made episode descriptions in my Tivo guide. "How It's Made 5- Episode 4: Javelins, Cuckoo Clocks, Hearts of Palm, Windshield Wipers."

"Stuffed Olives, Astrolabes, Western Saddles."
"Pencils, Metal Recycling, Coffee."
"Sails, Walnuts, Wheel Immobilizers, Honeycomb Structural Panels."
"Giant Valves, Sardines, Barographs, Disposable Diapers."
"Accordions, Pineapples, Artificial Joints."

It's just too awesome. The items in these lists never go together. The production of the show is no-nonsense. It doesn't attempt to tell any story beyond what steps are necessary to manufacture the subject. The musical accompaniment sounds like simple muzak from the bonus CD in your Cheerios box. The show could not be done any more perfectly and I love it exactly like it is.

So, I'm going to try to imitate the How It's Made descriptions with my next several posts. I am not consciously trying to put incongruent items together, I'm just grabbing what I've got and posting. They might all be bugs or not. They might all be man-made or not. Doesn't matter. But they are simply the product of me taking what I've got and putting it out there.

Broken Stick End, Holiday Ribbon, Bread Tab Printing

Above we have the broken end of a stick, which was about 8mm wide in total. You can observe the xylem and phloem holes, through which would course the water, sap, and other nourishment the tree needs to grow. You can also see the fuzzy pulpiness of the wood toward the left side. We've seen paper pulp before, so here it is before processing.

Below is a microphoto of shiny holiday ribbon. This particular one was a translucent piece of ribbon, and unexpectedly (or maybe not in retrospect) the threads of the ribbon are clear. Pretty cool. You can also see how it is made of a simple woven pattern of these threads. I'm guessing they are acrylic.

At the bottom we have a number which had been printed on the closure tab for a loaf of bread. You know, those little plastic dealies you crimp on after twisting the extra bread bag closed? I shot the number because I like numbers and I like printing, and found this particular printing process left a cool texture within the number.

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If I had a nickel for every time I heard that

More closeups of a nickel. Once again, there are no hard edges in the small world. No lines. Everything is round-edged, round cornered, lumpy, chipped, dented. This looks like a coin unearthed from the ancient Romans, but it's just one of our US coins, only 10 or 20 years of wear has beaten it to this condition.

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Assorted Stuff: Penny with Salt, 17 Pages, and Serrated

Here are some early pictures from my new lens, a Canon MP-E 65mm dedicated macro lens. So, how's it perform? I'm still getting used to it and changing around the way I use light in order to accommodate it, but I have a few photos I'm happy with already.

Above is an almost microscopic photo of a penny on which I had sprinkled salt. The magnification is somewhere between 8-10x life size (in my camera, making it much greater magnification here on your computer screen).

Below are 17 pages of a book, viewed on end. It was regular paper, not extra thick or anything... this new lens just allows me to get that close a photo. I'm a bit amazed.

Below the paper photo is a serrated edge of a knife, about one full serration (if that's a word). It was clean, so I'm guessing that those little crystals are simply some bit of soap or dishwasher solution that may have dried on the blade, crystallizing in the process.

Send me your ideas for tiny things to make big!

Send me your suggestions for something tiny that you'd like to see big.

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Money is for Nuthin' and the Chicks for Free

I will pay you to "follow" my blog. OK, not really, but here's some money in macro.

These are two macro photos of a nickel, looking HUGE! I like how the details in the rim of the coin above makes it appear to be carved from rock. And the shot below looks like mercury, teased into a form to mimic trees.

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Guerrilla Tactics Promoting Free Pie

Click these for some new albums:

Project M - March13

Project M - Great Quotes in Pie

Project M, and Me

First of all, the above photo is the "m" on the ever-delicious m&m. I used a blue one because Mimi loves blue. I was somewhat surprised at the dried frosting-like quality of the white stuff that makes up the "m."

I assume it's edible paint or something, I suppose I've never seen edible paint so close before. A first time for everything.

Next, I will use this opportunity to plug an upcoming adventure I plan to participate in. Well, adventure may be extreme. It's a workshop, for designers and people in similar fields. It's called Project M.

The brainchild of John Bielenberg, a designer/studio head kind of guy, Project M aims to take us designer youths, well and an old fart like me, and put us into an intensive two week workshop where we explore together how to "think wrong." In the process, we will achieve something with our talents that gives back to the world.

I've been interested in finding some way to do something positive for the world, and figuring how to use my experience as a designer/artist to do such a thing has eluded me. This is a great opportunity for me personally, and for the rest of the group involved to work together with group with similar interests and goals. I am really excited for this opportunity and really looking forward to it.

Here are a few resources about Project M, if you are curious:

My project for the application.

The challenge was to "Draw Nothing," and that was the only instruction.

Article about Project M and John Bielenberg

Project M website

(it doesn't necessarily work like other websites, keep an open mind)

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