Pixiq

I am currently writing another Petersen’s Photographic Magazine issue, and this time it is on nature’s details such as flowers, rocks and minerals, feathers, leaves, and so on.  This is a quarterly publication, and I write the entire issue.  One of the sections is on photographing bones, and I just happened to have a cast of a sabre tooth cat skull that I thought would fit in perfectly with the article.  Since this species is extinct, I came up with the idea of photographing it in ice as if it was just discovered in a frozen lake or river.

I bought a large plastic tub and filled it with water, and then I partially submerged the skull in it. Because the water was so deep – about 10 inches – it took three days in the freezer before the ice was solid.  I took the tub outside this morning and photographed it in the shade of my house with a 50mm lens and a tripod.  The skull was sticking out of the water about three inches, and to make sure the skull plus the surface of the ice were both sharp, I used f/32 for complete depth of field.