Natrolite, An Evolution

Natrolite

No!  This is not a mushroom but rather natrolite from Tic Canyon, California, whose formula is Na2Al2Si2O10 · 2H2O.  It belongs to the zeolite group and is hydrated sodium and aluminum silicate.  I made this image today, April 20, 2018.

I started photographing it on March 5, 2018.  I made this one on April 3, 2018, a resumption after a digression to photographing another mineral to test my lighting.   

Natrolite

I changed my lighting setup from using softboxes to the Fotodiox Led 440 Portable Studio because the soft boxes became crowded around the tiny subject.  The led lights are in the top and I hung the white nylon material which came with the unit so that the led lights would be like a softbox.

Fotodiox LED 440 Portable Studio

This studio is for product photography and works great for my use.

Blood Root

Blood Root

This is an interesting plant which is the only species in the genus Sanguinaria.  It's common name is Blood Root and is named thus for the red sap which flows from a broken root.  AKA bloodwort, redwort and red puccoon, it is a perennial herbaceous plant blooming in early spring.  I know where to find many of them at Gorman but not nearly all.

Blood Root

 Interestingly, the span of time from the first picture and the second is less than a day.  I know this because I have returned to a plant the following day to change something I did only to have great difficulty finding it.  The reason?  The petals fall off in a short span of time.

If you wish to unsubscribe, email to leleicher45@gmail.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.

Sphene-fluorite

Sphene-fluorite

This is actually a color shot. The crystal at the end of an imaginary line from the tip of the prism shaped crystal and the bump on the black blob, is actually amber in color.

Sphene-fluorite

In this capture, the amber crystal is in the upper left point of power.  I initially thought that might be the subject of this sample.  Sphene is also known as titanite.  The amber crystal could be Sphene.

The Fluorite is possibly the prism shaped crystal.  I could find nothing on this sample which would fluoresce under long wave or short wave UV light.  This sample is an enigma to me.

The first image is 3.57mm and 6.58X on the sensor.  This sample is from Octahedren, Arkansas.

Fluorite which is optically clear can be made into high quality, low dispersion, low chromatic aberration lenses.  Those lenses are expensive.  I don't think that I own any.



If you wish to unsubscribe, email to leleicher45@gmail.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.