Tag: Photography

Exploring Lippmann Plates: The Wonders of Early Color Photography | June 06 2026, 05:30

I learned today about a method of color photography invented in 1891, called the Lippmann plates. The Lippmann method is a beautiful hybrid of photography and holography. A layer of transparent gelatin with silver halide nanoparticles was applied to a glass plate, which was backed by a mirror made of liquid mercury (!). Light, passing through the glass, was reflected by the mercury, collided with itself, and created a standing wave. Inside the microscopic layer of gelatin, the light literally “froze,” burning silver nanostructures in strict accordance with the actual wavelength.

In all modern methods, color is achieved by overlaying three colors, just as on the screen from which you are reading this, red, blue, and green. Thus, there is no true yellow or purple in photographs. But on the Lippmann plate, all colors are real.

It’s also interesting that the Lippmann plate contains not a drop of pigment or dye. It is absolutely transparent! The color in it is born physically (due to structural interference) — just as the wings of butterflies or soap bubbles shimmer.

And obviously, you cannot make a copy from such a “photograph.” I’ll give a link to a good video below.

Indeed, this optical magic had its own quirks. Perfect mirror-like layers inside the plate were only obtained from pure, concentrated color. If a complex “dirty” or dull light entered the frame, the microstructures began to overlay each other, blurring the accuracy of color reproduction. Moreover, two opposite effects were born in the emulsion at the same time: the physical silver mirror created a colorful positive picture, but the silver itself remained just a regular black-and-white negative. Because of this optical conflict, the brightness of the frame was severely compressed, creating a vintage effect of a “hand-painted” photograph. Therefore, the method required jewel-like work with light and perfectly bright set pieces.

Exploring Algorithmic Image Processing for Large Format Printing | May 24 2026, 22:40

I’m playing with algorithmic image processing. Images only look interesting when printed in a large format – because all these fine lines merge when scaled to a phone screen. I’ll post a close-up in the comments.

It works like this: an image is given as input, and it is divided into squares of different sizes. Each square represents one number: how dark it is. The darker it is, the more lines are drawn inside. The lines are not straight – they are Bezier splines. They smoothly transition from one square to another because the points at the boundaries are shared. What results is not a grid, but a single continuous thread. Color – the image is split into CMYK channels (like in printing). Each channel is processed separately: its own grid, its own lines. Then the layers are superimposed on each other – and from three or four black-and-white plates, a colored picture emerges.

The image doesn’t look blocky because the splines smoothly transition from one square to another, but there is a problem: dividing the image into 10×10 squares essentially reduces the resolution tenfold. To correct this, several passes are made with different square sizes and shifted grids. The first pass uses large cells, the second is finer and shifted 10 pixels to the right, the third is even finer and shifted diagonally.

The entire process is controlled by a JSON config – separate parameters for each channel, specific settings for each pass within a channel. On output – SVG, which can be scaled to the size of a wall without loss of quality, and PNG, in which CMYK layers are superimposed with transparency.

Peripheral Vision: Unveiling Optical Illusions in News Apps | April 29 2026, 17:56

I’m trying to figure out if it’s just me or do other people experience this too 🙂 if you look anywhere except at the word “Omurbekova”, the line highlighted in red in the second screenshot (which is actually white) is distinctly visible in your peripheral vision. But as soon as you shift your gaze directly to it, the line disappears. That is, it’s only visible peripherally. Share your experiences 🙂

Wild Costa Rican Peccaries: My Unexpected Encounter | December 29 2025, 04:21

A wild Costa Rican boar, as part of a small herd, mistook me for one of its own and let me take its pictures. Strictly speaking, it’s not exactly a boar—it’s a peccary. Half of my phone is filled with these little grunters.