One of the subscribers to this blog on my website suggested that the crocodile in yesterday's post was perhaps the ugliest creature I'd ever photographed. I told him I felt that honor went to a shot of the face of a black widow spider that a friend of mine found in his garage in Southern California. This creature re-defines ugly. I captured this image with a scanning electron microscope on which I'd rented time at the University of Southern Calfornia. SEM images are all black and white because they involve bombarding a specimen with an electron beam which is devoid of color. I added the color in Photoshop. What really grossed me out was that the spider was too large to fit onto the stage in the vacuum chamber of the SEM, so I had to use a binocular microscope to decapitate it. Do you remember in the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' when Indiana Jones said, "Why did it have to be snakes?" Well, that's how I am with spiders. So seeing every single hair on that grotesque face with the ultra sharp binocular microscope took a Herculean effort on my part. After the 'surgery' was completed, the head had to be put into the first of two vacuum chambers where it was coated with an ultra-thin layer of gold (in the presence of argon gas, gold vaporizes). Then it was placed into the second chamber where it was bombarded by electrons that bounced off the metalized spider and formed an image on a cathode. The camera was built into the machine, and I controlled everything with a very intimidating (at first) control panel with dozens of knobs, dials, and buttons. This is a 60x magnification.
8 Comments
Dec 26, 2017, 3:23:27 PM
Lorraine - OMG!
Jim ... I think I'll never get used to your out-of/the/box visual mind and yes, as someone said, dedication to detail and sharing it with us...
Dec 26, 2017, 2:40:50 PM
Jim - Thanks, Lorraine. Never a dull moment in my brain!
Dec 22, 2017, 3:10:49 PM
Jim - Hi Rosemary, I love Topaz Glow, but that transforms an image from photography to art. Lots of detail is lost, and with subjects like this, I like to retain all that incredible detail.
Regarding practicing photography more and the feeling that 'your mind is too little', maybe this will put things in perspective for you. After I'd been shooting and selling my work for 10 years, when I look at my work back then from the point of view I have now, I say to myself, "What were you thinking?" Photography is a timeline -- it takes years to mature in your artistry. It took me a long, long time to get to the point where I am now.
Dec 21, 2017, 9:53:52 PM
Rosemary Sheel - Maybe using Topaz Glow would help some of those look less repulsive...I must say I admire your skills. I try to think of you because I should practice photography more, but my mind is too little.
Dec 21, 2017, 1:52:02 PM
Jim - Hi Rosemary, I do draw the line by not seeking poisonous snakes in the wild and not trying underwater photography of great white sharks without a cage! I do have a photo of a big, fat ugly tick. Here is a link to the page where the tick photo is located: http://www.jimzuckerman.com/scanning-electron-microscope
Look at the upper right photo on that page.
Dec 21, 2017, 12:40:05 PM
Rosemary Sheel - Wow! Is there no end to your dedication??
Creepy image. Now for a big fat tick!
Dec 21, 2017, 10:42:45 AM
Jim - Thanks, Bill.
Dec 21, 2017, 10:39:27 AM
Bill - Great story.