Scientific Artist

I think this dragonfly is a Broad Bodied Chaser.  As he decided to pay my garden a visit today – like all interesting insects that visit my garden on a nice sunny day – he got macro’d

The recent gales brought three of the big Sunflowers down   At least it gave me a close-up macro photo-opportunity.  Look at those intersecting Fibonacci spirals – Natural geometrical perfection

Taken earlier today this 2-framer is a fractal sharpened macromosaic of a Black Dahlia taken with a Canon 5D MkII and prime 100mm macro lens (with ring flash).

This is a 9-frame macromosaic of a Sunflower seed-head stitched using PTGui.  Hand-held, Canon 5D MkII, 100mm macro lens.

Looking at their best I took this set of Sunflower images this morning.  The head is over a foot across and the Sunflowers are well over 7 feet tall – they did extremely well this year

Another few minutes in the garden this afternoon with the 100mm macro lens, the ring-flash and the Canon 5D MkII.  Bees, Ladybirds, Sunflowers and Lilies were the subjects today.

Plenty of hoverflies about today in the flowers – but virtually no Bees   Where have all the Bees gone this year?

This is the beautiful head of a Sunflower in the New Forest Observatory garden, and this is a flower that has special meaning to me and my research in optics.  The Sunflower seed head has the seeds arranged according to Fibonacci spiral patterns where the rotation and spacing are directly related to the Golden Ratio.  Since the Golden Ratio is the most irrational, irrational number there is, we might expect some amazing optical properties for devices based on this geometry.  One property became the subject of one of my photonic crystal Patents – namely infinite rotational symmetry.  If you make an optically diffractive device where the optical scattering centres are based on the geometry of the Sunflower seed head pattern, then the diffraction pattern that results is a circle!  This implies that the scattering pattern has infinite rotational symmetry which in turn gives the photonic crystal based on this geometry some very interesting and unique properties.  But leave the Maths & Science for a moment and just gaze at the natural beauty of a Sunflower

The underside of a marrow leaf as a 3-frame macromosaic taken using the Canon 5D MkII and 100mm prime macro lens.  Daylight illumination at f#22 with the mosaic stitched using Photomerge in CS3.

On last night’s dog walk I came across a large group of Common Spotted Orchids all sitting under a very large gorse bush.  Here’s just one caught with the Canon 5D MkII and the Canon 100mm macro lens.