Photographer
THIS exquisite image captures the astonishing internal structure of crazy lace agate, also known as Mexican agate. This section of the mineral is some 65 million years old. Agate is related to quartz and infused with aluminium and iron, which help create the chaotic explosion of colours and patterns.
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Visualising the complexity of agate requires special techniques. Photographer Chris Perani uses a 200-millimetre camera lens, to which he attaches a microscope objective lens in order to achieve the necessary magnification.
Each final image is made up of around 25,000 photos merged together. To do this, Perani first takes 350 photos of a section using a focus rail that moves the lens no more than 10 microns per shot (the average width of a human hair is around 75 microns). He uses software to merge them, repeating this process 70 times.
Perani finds the crazy lace agate at specialist fairs and inspects each specimen for scratches, which he says would make the photo look terrible. This kind of photography captures the intricacies of minerals like never before, he says.
