Propping up a dodgy memory

You'd think with a name like Galaxy Porcelain Jasper (Nevada) this slice of rock would be a certainty for deep space images. The naked eye can see pale blobs on a darker, slightly messy background, and to me it looks a bit like a monochromatic deep field Hubble image full of clusters of galaxies. But nothing is certain until the microscope is switched on, and I confess it took several views before I warmed to this one. I'd say part of the problem was that I've been working with such vivid colours these seemed a little flat. But I persevered until it began to give up its secrets, and I'm sure space fans will enjoy this set.

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Seraphinite is beautiful stuff. It was discovered relatively recently so it's not all that common in shops, but it makes beautifully patterned polished stones for jewellry. The reason it's called Seraphinite is because the patterns resemble wings, in gloriously gleaming shades of green and silver. Yes, like recent features pietersite and chaoite it's another chatoyant rock, and a complete bitch. Satan was a fallen angel; I think this is his favourite stone.

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Pietersite, oh pietersite, what heartache you've caused me. Since my first look at a piece of tumbled pietersite I've wanted to get in and take a closer look, but it's really resisted my efforts to capture its beauty. I've made some pretty pictures, but it's been frustrating knowing how much better they could be. But gradually I've come closer and closer, and today made another advance.

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I sense a theme - it looks like you're only going to get pretty rock teasers in the form of unprocessed contact sheets for a while, but at least you can get an idea of what's coming up. This one is Yellowstone Ash Flow Jasper from Wyoming (USA), which was presumably formed by layers of volcanic ash. Apologies for lack of science content.

I have tinkered a little bit with one or two of these but most are raw off the microscope. Enjoy.

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Just another contact sheet of some happy snaps of a recent acquisition that looks to be very promising indeed.

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Received the Plumage poster in the mail today. After getting the first round of 30 x 40cm ones back I made this one lighter and was sufficiently hopeful that I ordered the bigger print at 50 x 75cm. The good news is the colours came out really bright, so that worked well.

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My slab of Charoite (also known as Charolite) is from Siberia, and I have a funny feeling it didn't come to me quite by entirely legal means. I bought it from a well-established dealer in the US, but I read somewhere that it wasn't permitted to export raw slabs from Siberia, only tumbled stones. I tell myself that I couldn't have read such a thing, so perhaps it's just that it's only quite tricky to get an export permit.

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The problem with a large and fabulous piece of rock such as my East Java plume agate, is that you end up with an awful lot of shots straight out of the gate. Rather than wait until I've weeded and processed them all, I've made up a contact sheet to give you an idea of what's in the pipeline.

ED: Now with contact sheet of modded images to show what I do to them.

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I have an odd relationship with lapis lazuli. It's frustrated me no end in the past. It looks beautiful, but I've never been able to photograph it in a way that really captures the deepest blues and the glitter of gold. I can't say for sure I've done it yet, but with the microscope those tiny flecks of gold are at least visible as tiny nuggets. It must be said that I've helped the colours along with brightness and contrast corrections, but the saturation is all the same.

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I'm not entirely sure where Sheep Creek is, but it's almost certainly somewhere in the USA. Wherever it is it has some interesting geology. Plume agate is one of the types I particularly like to collect and photograph because of its dreamy shapes suspended in milky depths.

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