I’ve been home for but a week, and tomorrow I set out on a grand adventure of driving crosscountry in wintertime for a yet grander adventure  as an artist in residence at the incomparable Autodesk Pier-9 workshop.   Before I go though, I wanted to upload a few of the digital test shots I made while in hawaii this last month, shooting “Electrified Flowers (and leaves) of Hawaii“.

These were off the cuff test shots – throw-aways – done to check my exposure, check the electrical apparatus,  and visualize the pattern of branching lightning that I might be about to record onto expensive 20-square-inch large sheets of silver halide and color film.   These are not the final products of my project, rather mere teasers of work-in-progress.   (I have yet to develop that film, which I’ll do once I can settle into San Francisco.)   However,  I’m pretty ecstatic with the results, sofar!

One of the most exciting learning discoveries for me during this work is that I can significantly control whether lightning issues radially from the leaf,  or tangentially skirting around it,   or some mix between the two.    I’m looking forward to making an excellent explanation of how this works,  both practically and in detailed physical terms.  It will probably be a chapter of the book I’m working on, “Theory and Practice of High Voltage Photography”.