Merry Christmas!

Photo of the week #8: This one was a Christmas collaboration - I handled the poses and Geoff took care of the lighting. Merry Christmas!

It really is hard to work with pets!


Who needs mistletoe?

And now we're off to enjoy some Christmas cheer!

It's almost Christmas!

Photo of the week #7: Another cheat (but with another good excuse)! Last week was a crazy one for me. Between starting my new job and trying to get ready for Christmas there wasn't much time left over for fun. There wasn't much time left over for blogging either, which meant no post last week. But, in fairness, this photo was taken on Sunday past, which means that it still counts as a photo of that week:

It's very noisy because it was shot at ISO 1600 and also a little blurry. But, I really like it anyway! I'm also including this shot of one of our Christmas lights. I especially like how you can see the blue glow from it's neighbor:

Inside an Ice Cube

Photo of the week #6: My potw is a bit of a cheat this week. I'm currently transitioning between jobs and am having a very hectic week trying to wrap up my work here at MUN. So, rather than try to find the time to take a new photo, I'm posting a couple that I shot here in the lab over the last few years. I've been meaning to post them for a while now anyway, so now seemed like as good a time as any!

Part of my work here at MUN has been to perform laboratory tests on ice in the coldroom at the NRC-IOT. The tests focus on trying to figure out why ice breaks the way that it does. Once the tests are over, I've often 'thin-sectioned' the ice to gain more information about its physical structure. In the case of ice, this means attaching a sample of ice to a glass slide, then using a microtome (basically a sharp blade) to shave the ice down to a very thin section. When you look at the section between crossed-polarized filters, the different grains that make up the ice show up as different colors depending on how the crystal structure of that particular grain is oriented. It's a very beautiful effect - the colors in these photos are actually true to life.

This first section was taken while I was testing out the microtome at the start of a test series. In order to make sure that the equipment was working properly, I let a paper cup full of water freeze, then sectioned it. This photo shows how the grain structure of the ice looks if you are looking down at the top of the cup. The black circles in the photo are air bubbles, which get pushed to the center of the ice as it freezes (like in an ice cube). They form because the ice starts to freeze from the top, bottom and sides all at the same time, which pushes the air to the center of the cup:

This photo shows the same frozen cup full of water, but this time sectioned along the height of the cup:

Christmas Truffles and a Light Box

Photo of the week #5. As usual, Geoff and I do a lot of baking this time of year to get ready for Christmas. These truffles are one of my new favorite recipes. They are essentially just balls of melted chocolate mixed with sweetened condensed milk that have been rolled in various coatings. We found a bunch of great coatings at bulk barn including colored sugar, coconut, graham wafer crumbs, cocoa, and candy cane sprinkles:

I took the photo of the truffles using a lightbox that I made today using an old cardboard box and some tracing paper. The purpose of the lightbox is to help diffuse the ambient light, which should prevent the formation of any harsh shadows. A lightbox this small is usually used for macro photography, but Annie couldn't resist modelling for a shot: