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Experiments with Laser Light  -  These images are nearly a year old. I wanted to try and make holograms and so purchased a red light laser diode, a beam splitter, several mirrors, and what were supposedly plates that someone could develop on their own. Unfortunately, I could never get the process to work to the standard that I wished. I did notice, however, that laser light was a technology that many still-life photographers had neglected as an interior light source. The advantage of the laser, I sensed, was that it allows the photographer to direct light on parts of his subject with an extreme degree of control. With the addition of a beam splitter in the light stream another interesting effect is achived: Light appears to 'boil' up on the surface it is hitting. Though it appears that parts of the subject are out of focus, if you look closely (at least in real life), you see small grains of light moving across the object. This creates an interesting tecture and makes the object, in the final photograph, look like it is leaping out from the background. Though this is a promising technique for still photography, I lost the heat sink for the laser diode shortly after this session... but when I find it one day I will resume these experiments.

James Dinnerville  

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