two dimensions

[misterx]

Ok, I said I'd explain how I made these photos, as well as the ones here
http://misterx.livejournal.com/552246.html
and here
http://misterx.livejournal.com/552908.html
so here goes. For the sake of brevity, I'm going to simplify things a bit, so if you find this interesting do some googling on your own for the full story.


I use a circular polarizing filter on my camera to control reflections when outdoors. You can think of a polarizing filter as a series of extremely thin slits. Unpolarized light waves pass through the filter, and all light waves that don't align with the slits get filtered out. The resulting light has all it's waves going in the same direction.

Another way to (partially) polarize light is to reflect it off a non-metallic object, such as a water, foliage, or glass.

If you have a polarized light source with the waves moving in one direction, and you apply a polarizing filter with the slits going in the other direction, what happens? They cancel each other out. The light is effectively blocked. That is why the circular polarizer is so handy for nature photography... by canceling out some of the reflected (usually colorless) light from foliage and water, we can better capture the colors of flower petals, wet grass, mud, sky, you name it.

With that background in mind, you may be able to guess how this works when I tell you that LCD monitors have a polarized coating. If the light exiting my monitor is polarized, then I should be able to cancel it out with my polarizing filter. I set up my camera on a tripod, pointed at the screen, and slowly turned the polarizer ring. Sure enough, when viewed through the camera, the screen darkened and then went completely black when I hit the correct angle.

Well, okay, theory proved, but what to do with it? What if I disturb the polarized light before it enters my camera? Bend it a bit, so the polarization isn't perfectly aligned with the screen in back. I set the screen to be pure white (view a white image full screen in paintshop), and began experimenting.

I tried putting a glass item between the screen and my camera, but glass transmits light too well, and has an even optical density. It only disrupts the polarization when there is extreme curvature, such as the glowing halo on the interior of the light bulb picture (http://www.vaughnsphotoart.com/nobrowse/20071007plasticsunset/IMG_4470.jpg).

Plastic however works splendidly. And interestingly, soft plastic and hard plastic work differently. Hard plastic, due to stresses in the plastic, bends the light different amounts, causing interference that shows up as colorful rainbow patterns, as seen in the CD cases, and the plastic flashlight photos. Soft plastic doesn't show these patterns, it just either allows transmission or not, as seen in the box pictures.

Once I had the basic idea down, I experimented with putting different images on my screen... patterns, my photos, etc, and then positioning plastic objects between the screen and the camera to allow certain parts of the images to show through. That is what is represented in this post, and in the box post.

So, that is it folks. If you don't have a polarizing filter, try different sets of sunglasses in your house. Hold them in front of your LCD or laptop screen, and turn them slowly. If they are polarized, they should go from appearing transparent to appearing opaque. If you have a point and shoot, you could put them in front of the lens of your camera, point them at your screen, and get pictures similar to these. Have fun!

This idea was based upon an article I read at instructables.com that showed how to view the stresses in hard plastics. http://www.instructables.com/id/Capture-the-Ethereal-Beauty-of-Everyday-Objects-Us/