Pixiq

I have wanted to use x-ray technology to capture unique subjects for many years, but it wasn't until last weekend that I finally made the effort to do it.  My original intention was to photograph only flowers, but after I started thinking about all the possible subjects, I realized that there are many more intriguing things to image in addition to flowers.  My favorite picture of the day turned out to be the piranha you see above.  I had purchased it as a souvenir when I was in Rio de Janeiro in the 90s, and when I was looking around my house with the x-ray machine in mind, I thought this might be a very cool thing to try.

There are different kinds of x-ray machines.  Some are made to reveal details in soft tissue, such as when women have mammograms, while others are made to study skeletal details, like when a person has a broken bone.  X-ray machines for soft tissue put out less kilovolts than is needed to penetrate bone, so for the flower photography I used a machine capability of 10 to 40 KV. Because the bones of the piranha are so small, this machine produced an excellent image of the fish skeleton as well.  I tried some seashells, and the shells with thin walls looked good.  However, some of the shells had thick walls and this particular machine wouldn't penetrate that very well.

The images of flowers were quite intriguing and beautiful.  I tried various varieties, from roses to orchids to camelias, and each one produced a unique and captivating design.  X-rays produce only black and white imagery, of course, but with Photoshop I played around with adding color (using the brush tool) as well as combining some grunge textures from http://flypapertextures.blogspot.com/.

The images below are:  gerber daisies, a nautilus seashell, and a camelia.