The Stal behind the mask

Next stage in the journey of my stalagmites is photographing them.  Having finished the polishing to make them look shiny we now get to the stage of photographing them.  This is useful for working out where things have to be done, where things have been done, to check where things were before we drilled or milled them away and to correlate between different records using different machines on parallel tracks up the centre of the stalagmite. But before we get to the photography we need to dress our stals up!  By giving them masks.

To produce good photographs in really good detail the stal needs to take centre stage. So we photograph them on a black card background.  We photograph the stals in two ways.  The first is obvious, reflected light, by shining bright lights onto the top surface of the stalagmite.  The second is a bit more cunning.  These slabs of stalgmite are typically about 2cm thick, so they let light through them. If we place them on a light table and shine light from underneath then you get a whole new perspective on whats inside.  You really get to see the inside structure.  But obviously light doesn't travel through black card and if we photographed them on the light table then the light from the table would drown out the light through the stal.

So I have to trace round each stalagmite piece, and then cut round a few millimetres inside the trace to create a mask that the stal sits ontop of.  Very crafty! The light comes through the stal and it all looks rather pretty.  Photos soon.